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Uni International 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 8526212
Martin, Janet Marie
CABINET SECRETARIES FROM TRUMAN TO JOHNSON: AN EXAMINATION OF THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS FOR CABINET STUDIES
The Ohio State University Ph.D. 1985
University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106
Copyright 1985 by Martin, Janet Marie All Rights Reserved CABINET SECRETARIES FROM TRUMAN TO JOHNSON:
AN EXAMINATION OF
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS FOR CABINET STUDIES
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate
School of The Ohio State University
By
Janet Marie Martin, B.A., M.A.
The Ohio State University
1985
Reading Committee: Approved By
Herbert Weisberg
John Kessel
Elliot Slotniek
Adviser Department of Political Science Copyright by Janet Marie Martin 1985 /
To my Mother, who urged me to stop, and To my Advisor, Herb Weisberg, who urged me to go on; Both strategies succeeded.
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many colleagues and friends have offered encouragement and support during the past five years since this dissertation project began. To
them I offer my sincere appreciation and thanks.
My advisor, Herb Weisberg, deserves my extreme gratitude and
thanks for believing that, "yes, Janet, you really will finish," and
for working endlessly towards encouraging, guiding, and shaping that belief into reality. I would also like to thank the members of my reading committee, John Kessel, for his detailed comments and insight throughout this project, and Elliot Slotnick, whose suggestions and
ideas added to the clarity and organization of the final manuscript.
My family— ray mother, Mary Martin, and sisters Judith Ann and Jean
T., and my brother-in-law Bob— have each, in their own way, given support throughout my work. And they all have my warmest thanks. I give very special thanks to my friend, John Winship, who, during the past two years, not only painstakingly read, re-read, and edited as many drafts of chapters as I was able to produce, but also never failed
to offer support and words of encouragement at those moments when they were most needed.
I would also like to thank several resource centers that greatly
iii facilitated this research. The staff and archivists of the following presidential libraries were most helpful in their research assistance either at the libraries or in providing inter-library loan materials, and I thank them for their assistance: Harry S. Truman Presidential
Library; Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library; John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library; and Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. For financial assistance I thank the Harry S. Truman Library Institute and
The Ohio State University Graduate School Alumni Research Awards
Committees for research grants that allowed for travel to the presidential libraries. I am also appreciative of the tuition grant provided by Dean David Potts of Gettysburg College.
I am grateful to the Polimetics Laboratory at The Ohio State
University, especially Jim Ludwig and Mark Teare, for their assistance in data preparation, and to the Academic Computer Center of Gettysburg
College and its entire staff— Dick Wood, Bill Wilson, and Kim
Breighner— for unfailing and ingenious help in providing services and facilities in the face of all manner of disasters, natural and otherwise.
iv VITA
Date and Place of Birth: August 23, 1955 Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Academic Career: Honors B.A. Summa Cum Laude Marquette University, May 1977 M.A., The Ohio State University June, 1980
Fields of Study: Major: American Politics (Executive and Bureaucratic Politics, Legislative Politics, Urban Politics, Political Parties) Minor: International Relations (U.S. Foreign Policy Decision Making)
Teaching Positions: Instructor, Gettysburg College 1983 to present Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University, 1981-83
Graduate Research Experience: Graduate Research Associate, Department of Political Science, 1978-79; 1982 Polimetrics Laboratory: Survey Research, The Ohio State University, 1979-81
Administrative Positions: Graduate Administrative Associate, Graduate School, President, Council of Graduate Students, 1981-82; Public Affairs, The Ohio State University, 1982-83
Fellowships and Research White House Fellowship Competition— Awards: Regional Finalist, 1983-84 Harry S. Truman Library Institute Grant-in-Aid, 1982 University Fellow, 1977-78; Graduate Student Alumni Research Award, 1982, The Ohio State University
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page DEDICATION...... ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iii
VITA...... v
LIST OF TABLES...... xi
CHAPTER
1. INTRODUCTION...... 1
CABINET STUDIES IN RETROSPECT...... 4
RECENT METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES...... 7
FOCUS OF THIS STUDY ...... 10
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS FOR STUDYING CABINET SECRETARIES...... 13
The Inner/Outer Cabinet Distinction...... 13 Balance...... 15 Issue Networks...... 15 The Partisan Factor...... 16 The "Naive" View of the Cabinet...... 17 Initial Versus Midterm Appointments...... 18
vi BRIEF OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS...... 19
FOOTNOTES...... 23
2. RECRUITMENT AND BACKGROUND CHARACTERISTICS...... 28
BALANCE AS A FRAMEWORK FOR CABINET STUDIES...... 29
An Illustration of Balance: Political Rewards...... 35 A Final Look at Balance...... 38
FEDERAL SECTOR EXPERIENCE...... 40
Analysis of Federal Sector Experience...... 45 Initial and Midterm Appointments...... 46
THE INNER CABINET AND THE OUTER CABINET AS A FRAMEWORK FOR CABINET STUDIES...... 53
The Role of the Inner Cabinet...... 54 Inner and Outer Cabinet: Federal Governmental Experience...... 58 The Inner and Outer Cabinet: Prior Governmental Service...... 61 The Inner Cabinet and the Outer Cabinet: Non-governmental Experience...... 65
CONCLUSIONS ...... 66
FOOTNOTES...... 69
3. ROLE PERCEPTION...... 73
THE "NAIVE" VIEW OF THE CABINET...... 74
Textbooks and the President's Cabinet...... 75 The Press...... 80
vii The President’s Perspective...... 81 The ’’Naive” View of the Cabinet— Another Look...... 86
METHODOLOGY...... 94
The Categorization Scheme...... 96 Policy-making...... 98 Efficiency and Effectiveness in Administering Department...... 99 Follow Laws/Constitution...... 100 Advise/Serve President...... 100 Serve Nation/Public...... 102 Work With Congress...... 103 Serve Clientele Needs...... 105
ROLE PERCEPTION BY ADMINISTRATION...... 107
ROLE PERCEPTION BY DEPARTMENT...... 117
THE INNER CABINET VS. THE OUTER CABINET...... 124
MIDTERM VERSUS INITIAL APPOINTMENTS — THE ”NAIVE" VIEW OF THE CABINET...... 128
BALANCE...... 131
ISSUE NETWORKS...... 135
CONCLUSIONS...... 139
The "Naive” View of the Cabinet...... 139 Johnson's Cabinet...... 141 Balance...... 143 Issue Networks...... 144 Summary...... 144
FOOTNOTES...... 146
4. DEPARTMENT GOALS...... 154
viii METHODOLOGY 155
The Categorization Scheme...... 157 Work on President’s Priorities/Platform...... 158 Policy-making...... 159 Work with and Seek Congressional Advice...... 161 Minimize and/or Manage Intragovernmental Conflict 162 Efficiency in Department...... 16M Serve Group Interests...... 165 The Public...... 166 Role Perception versus Department Goals...... 168
GOALS BY ADMINISTRATION...... 172
GOALS BY DEPARTMENT...... 175
FRAMEWORKS: INNER CABINET VS. THE OUTER CABINET...... 183
MIDTERM VERSUS INITIAL APPOINTMENTS— THE MNAIVE” CABINET EFFECTS...... 186
Federal Sector Experience...... 189 Past Employment: Governmental Versus Non-Governmental Experience...... 191 Prior Employment: Inner Versus Outer Cabinet...... 195
CONCLUSIONS...... 198
The Inner Cabinet vs. the Outer Cabinet...... 198 Initial Versus Midterm Appointments...... 199 Summary...... 200
FOOTNOTES...... 201
5. THE CABINET— A CONCLUDING LOOK...... 207
THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION— A SHIFT IN CABINET ORIENTATION?...... 209
ix INNER CABINET VS. THE OUTER CABINET...... 211
INITIAL APPOINTMENTS VS. MIDTERM APPOINTMENTS...... 213
THE PARTISAN FACTOR...... 215
FINAL THOUGHTS...... 218
FOOTNOTES...... 223
APPENDIX A: SENATE CONFIRMATION HEARINGS...... 225
FOOTNOTES...... 229
BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 230
x LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1. Representatives and Their Districts...... 43
2. Cabinet Members from the Federal Sector (immediate last employment)...... 48
3. Cabinet Members from the Federal Service...... 49
4. Last Source of Employment...... 59
5. Last Employed in the Federal Sector...... 60
6. Governmental Experience...... 62
7. Prior Service as Deputy or Assistant Secretary in the Same Department...... 64
8. Role Perceptions of Cabinet Members, 1945 to 1969...... 97
9. Role Perception by Administration...... 108
10. Comparisons of the Johnson and Kennedy Administrations Made by President Johnson...... 110
11. Role Perception by Departments...... 118
12. Role Perception— Inner Cabinet vs. the Outer Cabinet 125
xi Role Perception— Initial vs. Midterm Appointments...... 125
Role Perception— Initial Appointments...... 130
Role Perception— Midterm Appointments...... 130
Role Perception— Inner Cabinet by Type of Appointment... 131
Role Perception— Outer Cabinet by Type of Appointment... 132
Role Perception: Prior Departmental Experience— Initial vs. Midterm Appointments...... 137
Role Perception— Last Employment...... 138
Role Perception— Predominant Employment...... 138
Secretaries' Goals for Department, 1945 to 1969...... 157
Department Goals by Role Perception...... 170
Goals by Administration...... 172
Goals by Department...... 176
Goals— Inner Cabinet vs. the Outer Cabinet...... 184
Goals— Midterm Appointment vs. Initial Appointment..... 187
Goals— Prior Service in the Same Department...... 190
Goals— Last Employment...... 192
xii 29. Goals— Predominant Employment...... 193
30. Goals— Predominant Adult Employment Controlling for Inner/Outer Cabinet...... 196
xiii CHAPTER 1s INTRODUCTION
The cabinet is an intriguing element of the American system of government. From the time of Washington on down, Presidents have received counsel, be it solicited or volunteered, from their Department heads, although the cabinet is not mentioned in the Constitution. And the cabinet is held in sufficient esteem to warrant corporate
Presidents, Governors, lawyers, members of Congress, labor leaders, and , others forsaking current responsibilities to assume membership in this body. And yet, despite its eminence, the cabinet has remained an enigma to Presidents, to researchers, even to cabinet members themselves.
It is not too difficult to find statements by Presidents or secretaries on the frustrations they have had over the role of the cabinet. Evidence can also be found as to the extent of the dilemma and of deep desires to find a solution. Yet even when a President has considered the policy advisory potential of the cabinet, at times it has been the symbolic and political role of thecabinet that the President has focused on. By way of example, in a memo to President Lyndon
Johnson, Charles M. Maguire outlined his suggestions concerning the cabinet in a "guidebook for thought and action." It highlighted "some
1 2
immediate, middle and long-range methods for improving” and i capitalizing on the Cabinet— to its own and Johnson’s advantage. After discussing the role of the cabinet with former cabinet aides and political scientists, Maguire came up with a number of approaches, even inviting Richard E. Neustadt or Richard F. Fenno to lecture to the secretaries on ’"the Vital Center: Responsibilities of the Modern
Cabinet’’’ at a Cabinet Roundtable. To quote from his memo:
The President expressed a desire for the ’’novel" in Cabinet Meetings— agenda that will "make a man want to come." It would be novel and valuable to have an expert on the Cabinet address the Cabinet. Professors Neustadt or Fenno could, with the right prompting, do more than sketch Cabinet history. Their presentation could focus on the place of the Cabinet in the changing mainstream of American Government: the opportunity and necessity for enlarged Cabinet role and responsibilities; the new obligations to assist an increasingly over-burdened Chief Executive; the imperative for active and cross-cutting partnership, among the Cabinet, and with the President. This forum would also provide the President with a diplomatic setting for strong presentation of his own views on Cabinet functions and flaws.
The guidebook went on to make such proposals as "Publicizing the
Johnson Cabinet," given the apparent dearth of Johnson cabinet articles appearing in mass publications such as The New York Times Sunday
Magazine, Life, or Reader’s Digest, as compared to the large number of articles appearing during the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy years.
Thought was even given to livening up Cabinet meetings in response to Johnson's opinion that too many were "too dull." As a "change of pace and pattern...if only to break surface monotony and force alertness through the unexpected," Maguire suggested the use of short 3
films already produced by the Departments, on topics ranging from the
Post Office’s "mail avalanches and automated postal service” to the
Defense Department’s "documentaries of rural pacification projects in
Vietnam. ’’ ^
As another example of some of the varied opinions on the role of the cabinet, Dean Acheson, former Secretary of State, in an interview in
1953, recalled the differing opinions held by members of the Truman cabinet as to the role of that body. Acheson described a conversation that took place at a weekly luncheon meeting of the cabinet at which
President Truman was not present. The Defense Secretary, James
Forrestal, "began to talk about an idea which possessed his mind very strongly, which was that we should develop in the United States the
Cabinet system." Acheson replied by stating that "whatever the advantages were to the Cabinet government, they grew out of a different system. Under our Constitution we had Presidential government. The
President was the only person in the whole group who was elected by all the people of the United States. We were not his equals; we were his secretaries. Our function was not to try to develop a group which would have any collective effect upon the President. We could advise. We could say whatever we thought was right, but it was his decision, and we must operate on that basis."
Thus, as these examples suggest, the cabinet qua cabinet has caused debate among cabinet members and among Presidents and their assistants at various points in time. Yet rarely has it been the unique focus of a political scientist.
CABINET STUDIES IN RETROSPECT
The cabinet per se has rarely been studied by political scientists. O e r the past 80 years, studies of the cabinet have been few and far between. A brief review of the literature suggests this lack of attention.
In one of the rare discussions focusing solely on the cabinet by political scientists in the past 100 years, Henry Barrett Learned, writing in 1909, provides a description of the development and use of the term "cabinet” in both the United States and Great Britain.® A few years later, in 1913, John Fairlie, sensing a gap in scholarly work on 7 the cabinet, proposed a research agenda for future scholars. In his work, Fairlie presents a comparative analysis of the President’s cabinet across administrations. He also examines the appointment process and a number of variables that have remained untouched by researchers for decades. For example, Fairlie suggests studying the prestige of departments by secretary transfers from one department (e.g., War) to another department (e.g., State) in the same or later administrations.
For 67 years this line of research was not pursued. It was not until
1980 that a systematic effort was made to trace such transfers and place D research findings into a conceptual framework. And there were a number 5
of other variables Fairlie examined in looking at the appointment process (e.g., party background, occupational background) that only q within the past few years have received some attention.
Another body of literature on the cabinet appeared during the latter years of the Roosevelt administration and the early Truman years. 10 11 Specifically. Don K. Price , Arthur W. MacMahon , and George A. 12 Graham all include a discussion of the cabinet in their examination of reorganization of the executive branch. And these articles appear to have set the tone for much of the research conducted on the executive branch during the past 40 years. For the most part studies have depicted the creation and growth of the Executive Office of the
President and the advisory network surrounding a President, ignoring the cabinet per se. Textbooks have noted the "swelling of the 13 Presidency."
In the past fifteen years, it would appear as if much of the research on the President and his advisors has been channeled in two directions. First, there have been studies of the personal intimate advisory network the President relies upon. Presidential 14 autobiographies and biographies stress the role of such advisors. 1C 1^ * *r Irving L. Janis , Alexander George , and Richard T. Johnson each present a conceptual framework for analyzing these advisory systems, with both Janis and George noting structural implications of these advisory networks. Second, studies have examined the growth of the
Executive Office of the President. Emphasis has been given to relations 6
between the President, White House staff, the departments, and Congress.
18 1 q 20 Hugh Heclo , Stephen Hess , and Dan Rather are three authors whose
emphases have varied in their respective studies of the executive branch
and the presidential advisory system. The growth of the Executive
Office of the President, both in numbers and in importance, oftentimes
at the expense of the cabinet department heads, is reflected in such
studies. A number of studies have focused on specific staff units 21 within the Executive Office of the President. Some studies have
examined the cabinet vis a vis another branch of government. In this vein, Redfield's autobiographical account provides the perspective of one who has served in both Congress and the cabinet, although his 22 observations are of an earlier era.
In the past 25 years, Richard F. Fenno’s study of The President’s
Cabinet, published in 1959, remains the only book-length study of the 23 cabinet per se. And the focus of several scholars in recent years has been on the appointment process, including works by G. Calvin Mackenzie with a broad focus— examining hundreds of top executive political appointments in his analysis— and Richard L. Schott and Dagmar S.
Hamilton, focusing on the political appointments of but one 2li administration— that of Lyndon Johnson. 7
RECENT METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES
In recent years, researchers of the executive branch of government have approached their studies with a number of innovative techniques.
Scholars have used several different approaches to facilitate research.
In doing so they have helped to alleviate some of the problems which in the past seem to have prevented scholars from studying the executive branch in the same behavioral way as is standard for other subfields of political science, such as Congress or voting behavior. For example, when one moves beyond the President himself as the object of analysis to the supporting players of an administration, the number of cases increases markedly. George C. Edwards, sympathetic to the needs of research, identifies a^-eas of executive branch research where quantitative methods can be used, such as in viewing the presidency as a 25 set of relationships to increase the number of cases. It would appear that by examining cabinet secretaries either longitudinally within departments, or even within an administration but across departments, one gains a number of cases that allows statements of a more general nature to be made. With the use of such an approach, the viability of a systematic examination of the cabinet becomes apparent.
Nelson W. Polsby’s theoretical framework, providing a classificatory scheme of cabinet secretary appointments (e.g., specialists, client-oriented, and generalists), and resulting consequences of each 8
? fi type of appointment, suggests the feasibility of such an approach.
Herbert F. Weisberg*s behavioral study of cabinet transfers and the prestige of departments is further illustration of analytical 27 techniques enhancing cabinet research. The recent cabinet studies by 28 29 James J. Best and James D. King and James W. Riddlesperger, Jr. , although of limited focus, make use of longitudinal data in examining, respectively, background characteristics and the question of a partisan factor in recent cabinet appointments.
It is interesting to note Fenno*s assessment of the merits of presenting quantitative data on the cabinet. Fenno writes,
Some attempt has been made to discover a patterning in terms of the personal backgrounds and social characteristics of cabinet members. They are found to be not literally representative of all segments of the population, and these findings are used to buttress conclusions about their elitist character. It is, perhaps, worth recognizing that whatever other factors may enter into the appointment process, those which would guarantee an accurate cabinet reflection of the census statistics do not. But the setting up of this statistical norm seems even more over-simplified, and further removed from the realities of the appointment process, than the ordinary rule-of-thumb standards by which cabinet-making is judged. To be sure, some aspects of cabinet selection can be quantified, but the problem remains as to whether anything meaningful is being measured. In any case, the bias of this study is to urge a more qualitative appreciation of the multi-dimensional recruitment process and of the cabinet as. but one institution in a cohering independent system.
Fenno is correct in urging an "appreciation of the multi-dimensional recruitment process and of the cabinet as but one institution in a cohering independent system," yet I would suggest that a quantitative approach, including the use of demographic variables, can also lead to 9
the same appreciation. It is through such a systematic and rigorous approach that the foundation can be be laid for independent analysis of the cabinet. Perhaps the frustration experienced by political scientists and journalists in writing about the cabinet stems from the absence of an adequate conceptual framework with which to discuss the cabinet. As a case in point, presidential scholar Edward S. Corwin, writing just prior to the presidential election of 1948, describes the problems he saw with "the cabinet."
"F.D.R.," according to Miss Perkins, tried at first to have "full Cabinet decision and expression on matters of policy"; but it was no go. In a short time the established pattern reasserted itself. Few "Cabinet agreements" were reached; and such consultation as took place was between the President and individual members of the Cabinet about their departmental problems. It would be easy to document Miss Perkins* account from the more recently published reminiscences of Messrs. Hull, Morgenthau and Stimson, or for earlier years, from Mr. Roosevelt's own book, "On Our Way." The truth is that the Cabinet has in our day become of negligible importance in the determination of national policy. Why is this? Doubtless the personal element has often operated to depress the Cabinet's role in the policy field. But when so variable a factor repeatedly produces the same result there must be an underlying constant factor at work. * The Cabinet is of negligible influence in the shaping of broad governmental policies because it is composed of men whose principal business is that of administration and who, consequently, even when they are not administrative experts at the outset, are required to become such. Unfortunately, an expert in a particular area of govermental activity is not likely to possess the breadth of outlook which is most desirable in a political adviser, or the time or inclination to interest himself in the problems of other departments or of the country at large.
The distinction later proposed by Thomas Cronin between an inner cabinet and an outer cabinet might have helped Corwin to elucidate the schizophrenic behavior expected of a cabinet member. Unfortunately, 10
such a theoretical framework had not yet been proposed.
FOCUS OF THIS STUDY
Whereas Fenno, in the last study devoted exclusively to the
President's cabinet, stated the purpose of his study as "mainly an attempt at understanding the operation of the Cabinet in the American political system; only secondarily is it aimed at substantiation or modifying existing ideas," J the intent of my study is to assess existing ideas or ways of thinking about cabinet secretaries. What frameworks have been identified and used in describing and/or evaluating the secretaries in the President's cabinet?
In the following chapters I hope to provide such an analysis by systematically looking at the secretaries from the inherited cabinet of the Truman administration to the final cabinet of the Johnson administration. The intention is to discern patterns, both longitudinally and across departments within each administration, that have been suggested by past scholars, or which may have escaped prior detection. It is my intention to build upon previously suggested patterns and relationships by adding empirical evidence to support or refute what have traditionally been descriptive studies and commentaries on the President's cabinet secretaries. The three Chapters that follow 11
will examine: 1.) recruitment and background characteristics of each
cabinet; 2.) role perception of respective cabinet members; and 3.)
goals envisioned for each department by the secretary at the start of
his or her tenure, all in the context of the frameworks or patterns that
have been used in describing cabinet secretaries.
I have limited this dissertation to a focus on these
administrations for several reasons. The Truman administration is a
good starting point since it follows the great shift in the nature of
the federal government from one of a limited role in the lives of
Americans to a major and controlling force fueled by a huge executive
branch bureaucracy. Although the cabinet undergoes a number of changes
in the time frame of this study, all changes were of a similar nature.
The creation of the Defense Department in 19^7 established civilian
control over the armed forces in the hopes of better management.
Similarly, in 1953 and again in 1966, the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare, and the Department of Housing and Urban
Development, respectively, were created as a means of consolidating a number of programs and agencies into one Department.
I also want to focus this study on the secretary's perspective.
This requires an examination of documents from the presidential
libraries and oral histories, as well as published interviews and Senate
hearings that were more readily accessible after the Roosevelt administration and prior to the Nixon administration. In addition, a
study of this sort requires a finite period of time, and a data base of 12
manageable proportions. Given these factors the time period extending
from the Truman through Johnson administrations was selected.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty with a study of this sort is the
gathering of data and the reliability of sources. Chapter 2 is a
straightforward analysis of background characteristics of cabinet on members. Yet sources, viewed as reputable, can be in error. The task
then becomes one of sifting through information and confirming
information through several sources.
Another problem is the inconsistent information available on
cabinet secretaries and the secretary's perspective. There is an uneven
collection of oral histories and administrative histories in
presidential libraries, as well as collections of papers deposited for
each secretary. Some material is still closed, other material is
unavailable for citation. Senate confirmation hearings could be a
useful resource in examining executive and judicial appointments, but
are quite uneven as to their content. (See Appendix A for a discussion
of some of the problems associated with the gathering of data for this
study, and in particular, the use of Senate confirmation hearings.)
It is important to provide a first attempt at testing theoretical
frameworks used in describing and explaining cabinet secretaries. It is
the hope of this author to begin such testing in the remaining chapters
of this dissertation. 13
In the following section I will present a brief introduction to and discussion of the various frameworks and theoretical orientations that have been used in writings on the cabinet.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS FOR STUDYING CABINET SECRETARIES
The Inner/Outer Cabinet Distinction
A perspective taken by recent writers analyzing the cabinet is to subdivide the cabinet into two parts— the inner cabinet and the outer cabinet— and then use the inner/outer cabinet distinction as the framework for further discussion. Thomas Cronin suggested this 35 inner/outer cabinet distinction. He writes, "this classification, derived from extensive interviews, indicates how White House aides and cabinet officers view the departments and their access to the president.
The inner cabinet includes the secretaries of state, defense, and treasury, and the Attorney General. The occupants of these cabinet positions generally have maintained a role as counselor to the president; the departments all include broad-ranging, multiple interests. The explicitly domestic policy departments, with the exception of Justice, have made up the outer cabinet. By custom, if not by designation, these cabinet officers assume a relatively straightforward advocacy orientation that overshadows their counseling 14
role."36
This distinction of an inner/outer cabinet difference was not
suggested until the 1970's. Therefore, it is a rather recent
conceptualization of the President’s cabinet. And it has not been
subjected to much in the way of empirical testing. In part, that might
be one explanation for the ambiguity surrounding the inner/outer
conceptualization scheme. If the classification of the cabinet into an
inner versus an outer cabinet is found not to be true in all instances, then a revision of this categorization scheme may be in order.
The inner cabinet/outer cabinet distinction is the principal theoretical orientation proposed thus far for cabinet studies per se.
As such, it will guide much of the analysis that follows. But some other frameworks will also be considered. 15
Balance
At the start of a new administration, cabinet selections are often evaluated as a unit to see if the administration is "balanced” in its representation of interests, regions of the country, ethnic backgrounds, and so on. However, as a theoretical construct, "balance" is wanting
since there is a singularity in the applicability of the term. As will
be demonstrated in Chapter 2, balance only has meaning from the perspective of outsiders— that is, the President, press, or constituent groups— with little meaning from the secretary’s perspective. In addition, this term really does not lend itself to much in the way of analysis and little can be said except for those appointments made at one particular point in time. In discussing recruitment and background characteristics of cabinet appointees in Chapter 2, "balance" will be evaluated for its appropriateness in discussing even the initial appointments of a President.
Issues Networks
Another conceptual framework that has been proposed in recent years is that of issue networks. However, this framework extends beyond the 16
cabinet per se to encompass much of the executive branch hierarchy as
well as those outside the government who are interested in affecting
policy. Hugh Heclo suggests that in the past 25 years, issue networks
have come to "overlay" rather than replace subgovernments. "More than
ever, policy-making is becoming an intramural activity among expert
issue-watchers, their networks, and their networks of
networks....Instead of party politicians, today's political executives
tend to be policy politicians, able to move among the various networks,
recognized as knowledgeable about the substance of issues concerning
these networks, but not irretrievably identified with highly
controversial positions. Their reputations among those 'in the know' 37 make them available for presidential appointments."J
Although issue networks have been suggested which include far more
of the Executive Branch appointees than just cabinet secretaries, the
usefulness of this concept in understanding the cabinet will be
explored.
The Partisan Factor
A fourth framework, that of the partisan factor in cabinet
appointments, has been suggested by James D. King and James W.
Riddlesperger. "Political parties are omnipresent in American government— Congress is organized along party lines; representatives and 17
senators are more supportive of the president's programs when they are
members of his party; Democrats and Republicans advocate and adopt
distinctly different policies. And yet, students of cabinet recruitment
and selection have failed to systematically examine the appointments of o Q Democratic and Republican presidents.1,3 King and Riddlesperger's
analysis, covering an extended period of time— that of the Truman
through Reagan administrations— does suggest an area of cabinet research
that may prove fruitful, yet has most likely been overlooked due to the
low number of cases for selected time periods. It is, however, a
framework that will not be overlooked in the analysis that follows.
The "Naive" View of the Cabinet
I want to introduce a new framework— that of the "naive" view of the cabinet. Just as students of the presidency have found it useful to
consider the effects of a stereotypical view of the presidency, that is, a "textbook presidency" where the individual is viewed as all powerful, so do I want to see the effects of steroetypical views of the cabinet by
cabinet members, that is, the expectation that cabinet members will serve as collegial advisors to the president. Is there a "naive" view of the cabinet shared by the press, public, and more importantly the president and his cabinet? Does this give cabinet members false views of their own role in government? Have the media and presidential scholars shaped expectations of what cabinet secretaries are to do in 18
office and therefore distorted the role envisioned by secretaries?
These are some of the questions that will be explored in Chapter 3:
Role Perception.
Initial Versus Midterm Appointments
Finally, the question of whether there are differences in the
types of individuals initially appointed to a President's cabinet at the
outset of a term of office from those subsequently appointed during the course of the administration will be examined closely in Chapter 2. If there are differences in backgrounds, does this then affect role perception or what goals one sets for a Department? Even if backgrounds might be similar, does a President select someone during the course of
the Administration who will envision the job of secretary differently
from the individual first appointed by the President -to that position?
These are some of the questions that will be addressed in the
following chapters. The next section will present a brief overview of the remaining chapters of this dissertation. 19
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS
In the remainder of this dissertation, the reader will note that the emphasis of this study is on cabinet secretaries, rather than on the cabinet as a collectivity. In addition, the role of the individual secretaries or the cabinet as a collectivity in the advising process and decision-making process will not be examined. These are important areas to be researched by scholars in the future, but are beyond the limited scope of this study. The remainder of this section will present a brief overview of each of the 3 substantive chapters of this study.
In Chapter 2 the focus will be on examining recruitment and background characteristics of the cabinet secretaries selected for the
Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Administrations in terms of the frameworks discussed earlier in this chapter. As mentioned, a number of studies in recent years have focused on the background characteristics of executive branch officials. Some studies have looked broadly at all 3Q executive branch appointments over a period of time. * Others have i|0 focused on one administration. And some studies that have focused on the cabinet have emphasized one background factor (e.g., past Department lii% lip work ) or one Administration.
My focus is broader. In Chapter 2 I will examine several recruitment and background variables that have been identified in these 20
studies as important in understanding the nature of the President’s cabinet. I will also look at the variables identified by Best, and King Mo and Riddlesperger in their examinations of cabinet secretaries. The past experience of a secretary can greatly influence how they will perceive their position. If Hugh Heclo is right in describing issue networks, then whether one is moving about within a particular policy area from one relevant position to another (for example, from a private corporation to a position in a university and finally to a position in an executive department) can be demonstrated by examining past employment.
In Chapter 2, the variables I will closely examine include location of last employment and predominant adult employment, last employment, predominant adult employment, past federal sector experience, past department experience (including service as Assistant or Deputy Secretary), and briefly, education.
In Chapter 3, the focus will be on the role perception of the cabinet secretaries at the start of their terms of office. What is the job each envisions for himself or herself as a member of the President's cabinet and head of a department? Will they view themselves as the
President's top adviser in a limited area? Is their job one that emphasizes a close working relationship with relevant congressional committees? Or, for example, will the secretary view one of their main responsibilities as keeping the public informed of policy decisions and activities in their department? 21
Role Perception will be studied by examining statements made by
cabinet secretaries during Senate confirmation hearings, in press
conferences, and in letters and memoes. (The methodological techniques
and procedures will be carefully explained in Chapter 3.) I am limiting
this analysis to an initial perception of the job and therefore will not
be looking at how in fact the secretary does act as head of a department
and as a member of the cabinet throughout their tenure.
In looking at role perceptions, several of the variables identified
in Chapter 2 concerning recruitment and background characteristics will
be used to help explain similarities and differences, including past
employment, especially prior federal sector and department experience.
In Chapter 4, the focus will be on the initial goals the secretary
envisions for his or her respective department. The goals will be
identified through an examination of confirmation hearings, press
conferences, and intradepartmental communications. Goals may be similar or dissimilar to the roles a secretary identifies, but the emphasis in
this chapter is on what the secretary plans for the department. For example, are congressional liaison units to be set up in offices throughout the department to facilitate a close, cooperative working relationship with appropriate committees? Are offices to work on
improving productivity and efficiency and design new methods to eliminate waste in their respective areas? Or are offices and bureaus to be sure to seek input from relevant clientele groups, and work to 22
meet the needs of these groups? Again, this analysis will be limited to the secretary’s initial perception of department goals. As in Chapter
2, the past employment of a secretary will be used to explain department goal orientation.
In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, both a longitudinal analysis by administration and an analysis within an administration, but across departments, will be used to assess these variables in the context of the frameworks that have been identified as guiding writings on the cabinet.
Chapter 5 will present a summary of my findings and offer some conclusions that can be drawn from this study of cabinet secretaries.
Finally, I will suggest a research agenda for future studies of cabinet secretaries. 23
Chapter 1: Footnotes
Charles M. Maguire, Memorandum for the President, August 20 (no year), Confidential File, WHCF, Box 21, "FG 100-Cabinet Departments," Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.
2 Ibid., attached outline, "Roundtable #4." In private correspondence with Richard Fenno (August 12, 1984) and Richard Neustadt (August, 1984) both indicate they were not contacted by Maguire or others for this purpose during the course of the Johnson administration.
•3 Ibid., attached outline, "III. Publicizing the Johnson Cabinet." The Guidebook stated: "Unless there is some strange and invisible historical cycle at work, we should be able to prompt articles on the Johnson Cabinet....In historical perspective, the Johnson Cabinet is an exceptional story— exceptional men, challenges, achievements— met at an exceptional time in American government and life. It is your instrument. Its record as written should inevitably reflect credit on Presidential leadership." The proposals to accomplish this included: 1.) working "with Douglass Cater to sound out qualified (and friendly) authors on writing Cabinet articles. Richard Fenno, Neustadt, Stanley Hyman, Louis Koenig are possibilities," and 2.) working with Cater about a book on the Cabinet. "For quick publication, suggest Foreward by distinguished authority and essays by individual Cabinet members, ghosted if necessary."
ii Ibid., attached outline, "IV. Film Presentation at Cabinet Meetings." It appears as if Johnson did meet with some success— Ray Scherer’s August 15, 1966 statement on NBC News attests to that fact: The feeling that the Cabinet was somewhat unwieldy and musty carried over into the early months of the Johnson Administration. But the more President Johnson saw at first hand the workings of his Administration, the more it occurred to him that in a big government..., Members of the Cabinet tend to become isolated from each other.... The President’s counsel to his various Cabinet Secretaries was this— 'think nationally and not parochially, if you are a Cabinet Member.’ When the President brought Robert E. Kintner, the one time broadcasting executive, into the White House circle early this year he told Mr. Kintner he wanted the Cabinet to play a more meaningful role. The result has been more Cabinet meetings, 24
preparatory work for them, and a greater understanding among the Departments about the problems of other Departments. All of which is another way of saying that the Cabinet has come back to life....Reporters were given a first hand look at the workings of the Cabinet last week when the President called reporters in just as a 90 minute Cabinet session was breaking up. One Member of the Cabinet after another, Connor, Wirtz, Fowler, Freeman and so on down the line, stepped before carefully prepared charts and with pointer in hand demonstrated both in succinct and graphic fashion what is happening to the economy....Each Cabinet Member left the room with the feeling that the problem of his particular bailiwick (sic) was a national problem and not a departmental one and that somehow they all fit together. NBC News, August 15, 1966, Ray Scherer, Transcript from Confidential File, WHCF, Box 22, "FG 100/MC, Cabinet Meetings 6-1 through 8-30-1966," Lyndon B. Johnson Library.
5 Dean Acheson, Papers of Dean Acheson, Princeton Seminars, Rewrite Reel I, July 2, 1953, Box 82, Reading Copy III, pp. 7-8; Truman Library.
^Henry Barrett Learned, "Historical Significance of the Term 'Cabinet' in England and the United States," American Political Science Review (August 1909): 329-346.
7 John Fairlie, "The President’s Cabinet," American Political Science Review (February 1913): 28-44.
g Herbert F. Weisberg, "Cabinet Transfers and Department Prestige," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 1980.
Q Nelson W. Polsby, "Presidential Cabinet Makings Lessons for the Political System," Political Studies Quarterly (Spring 1978): 15-25; James D. King and James W. Riddlesperger, Jr., "Presidential Cabinet Appointments: The Partisan Factor," Presidential Studies Quarterly (Spring 1984): 231-237.
10Don K. Price, "Staffing the Presidency," American Political Science Review (December 1946): 1154-1168. 25
11 Arthur W. MacMahon, "The Future Organizational Pattern of the Executive Branch," American Political Science Review (December 19^^)r 1179-1191.
12 George A. Graham, "Reorganization— A Question of Executive Institutions," American Political Science Review (August 1938): 708-718.
13 Thomas E. Cronin, The State of the Presidency (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975).
14 Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point (New York: Popular Library, 1971); James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1956).
1^Irving L. Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972).
16 Alexander George, "The Case for Multiple Advocacy," American Political Science Review (September 1972): 751-785.
17 Richard T. Johnson, Managing the White House (New York: Harper Row, 1974).
18 Hugh Heclo, A Government of Strangers: Executive Politics in Washington (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1977).
19 ^Stephen Hess, Organizing the Presidency (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1976).
20 Dan Rather and Gary Paul Gates The Palace Guard (New York: Warren Paperback Library, 1975).
21 John H. Kessel, The Domestic Presidency (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1975); Larry Berman, The Office of Management and Budget, 1921-1979 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979).
22 Stephen Horn, The Cabinet and Congress (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960); William C. Redfield, With Congress and Cabinet 26
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1924).
23 Richard F. Fenno, Jr., The President’s Cabinet (New York; Vintage Books, 1959)•
24 G. Calvin Mackenzie, The Politics of Presidential Appointments (New York: The Free Press, 1981); Richard L. Schott and Dagmar s7 Hamilton, People, Positions, and Power; The Political Appointments of Lyndon Johnson (Chicago; The University of Chicago Press, 1983).
25 George C. Edwards, "The Quantitative Study of the Presidency," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 1979.
2 6 Polsby, "Presidential Cabinet Making: Lessons for the Political System."
27 Weisberg, "Cabinet Transfers and Department Prestige."
2 8 James J. Best, "Presidential Cabinet Appointments: 1953-1976," Presidential Studies Quarterly (Winter 1981); 62-66.
2Q James D. King and James W. Riddlesperger, Jr., "Presidential Cabinet Appointments: The Partisan Factor," Presidential Studies Quarterly, (Spring 1984); 231-237.
30 Richard F. Fenno, Jr., The Presidents Cabinet (New York; Vintage Books, 1959), 86-87.
31 Edward S. Corwin, "Wanted; A New Type of Cabinet," New York Times, October 10, 1948, sec. 6, p. 14. "Copyright © 1948 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission."
32 Cronin, The State of the Presidency, chapter 7.
33 J Fenno, The Presidents Cabinet, p. 3.
34 As way of illustration, Robert Lovett is listed as having 27
served as "assistant secretary of war" and in 1947, as "undersecretary of defense," in a standard reference source— Robert Sobel, Biographical Directory of the United States Executive Branch (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Co., 1971), whereas he actually served as undersecretary of state and undersecretary of defense at the request of George C. Marshall, when the latter was serving as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, Sobel is listed as a source for summary information in several research and bibliographical guides to the Presidency, including the following: Fred I. Greenstein, Larry Berman, and Alvin S. Felzenberg, Evolution of the Modern Presidency: A Bibliographical Survey (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1977), #43; and Robert U. Goehlert and Fenton S. Martin, The Presidency: A Research Guide (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio Information Services, 1985), p. 153*
33Cronin, The State of the Presidency, pp. 188-208.
36Ibid., p. 191.
Hugh Heclo, "Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment," in Anthony King, ed., The New American Political System (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), pp. 105-106.
O Q King and Riddlesperger, Jr., "Presidential Cabinet Appointments: The Partisan Factor," p. 232.
39 David J. Stanley, Dean E. Mann, and Jameson W. Doig, Men Who Govern (Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution, 1967); Mackenzie, The Politics of Presidential Appointments.
40 Schott and Hamilton, People, Positions, and Power: The Political Appointments of Lyndon Johnson.
41 Weisberg, "Cabinet Transfers and Department Prestige."
42 Polsby, "Presidential Cabinet Making: Lessons for the Political System." 43 JBest, "Presidential Cabinet Appointments: 1953-1976;" King and Riddlesperger, "Presidential Cabinet Appointments: The Partisan Factor." CHAPTER 2: RECRUITMENT AND BACKGROUND CHARACTERISTICS
A number of studies have been done on top executive level
appointments in government, including examination of their background
characteristics. However, the focus of these works has been broad,
variously including analysis of agency heads, Assistant Secretaries, and
White House staff assistants, as well as cabinet heads. Only by
isolating these members designated as the President's cabinet from the rest of the administration can a true test of the theoretical frameworks used in describing the cabinet be made. This chapter will use two
frameworks described in the last chapter— that is, "balance" and the inner/outer cabinet framework— to examine the recruitment and background patterns for the cabinet secretaries of the Truman,
Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations.
Before discussing the balance framework as an appropriate means of exploring the selection of a President's cabinet secretaries, the term
"balance" will be examined extensively as it has been used in textbooks and the media. After a definition of balance has been established, this framework will then be explored for its usefulness in studying cabinet secretaries. Next, federal government experience will be examined as a factor in explaining recruitment of cabinet secretaries.
28 29
Following this discussion I will explore the inner and outer cabinet framework for its appropriateness in explaining recruitment of cabinet secretaries. The inner and outer cabinet framework has less ambiguity than balance in its common interpretation and therefore only a brief introduction of this framework will be given before analyzing its usefulness in understanding the cabinet.
Throughout this chapter, special consideration will be given to an exploration of the differences between a President’s initial and midterm appointments. In addition, the work of Hugh Heclo in identifying a movement of individuals with common policy interests across job sectors
(e.g., an individual interested in labor law moving into a high level position in the Department of Labor) will be drawn upon throughout the analysis of the above frameworks.
BALANCE AS A FRAMEWORK FOR CABINET STUDIES
As described in Chapter One, balance has primarily come to have meaning in the context of geographical representation and constituent representation (with some overlap— e.g., a Westerner serving as head of the Department of Interior with a concern for the interests of environmentalists.) 30
Balance has long been perceived as a factor in the initial configuration of cabinets, both by textbook writers and journalists.
Perhaps balance has been the most common interpretation of a President's selection of cabinet secretaries. For example, within a three month period following the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman made a number of changes in the cabinet. In the replacement of
Secretary of Agriculture C. R. Wickard with Clinton P. Anderson,
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins with Lewis Baxter Schwellenbach,
Attorney General Francis Biddle with Thomas C. Clark, and Postmaster
General Frank C. Walker with Robert E. Hannegan, the new geographical alignment of the cabinet was duly recorded by reporters. The New York
Times reported that "These shifts will alter the geographical as well as the personal make-up of the Cabinet, introducing a large representation from the West as compared with the high proportion of Easterners who 2 sat in the Roosevelt cabinets." Similarly, the addition of Fred M.
Vinson, a Kentuckian, to Truman's cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury o was described as giving "border state recognition in the Cabinet."
Fifteen years later, as President-elect John F. Kennedy worked to assemble a cabinet, the press was quick to note the interests "rewarded" with a cabinet seat. For example, the appointment of Governor Luther
Hodges, of North Carolina, was labeled as "a decision that reassures the business community while rewarding the Southerners for hard and li successful campaigning in the post-convention period."
But the press is not alone in describing the cabinet in terms of balance. Authors of introductory American government textbooks have 31
also identified cabinet members in terms of constituent ties. For example, Emmette S. Redford et al_ in their introductory textbook written in the 1960’s wrote the following:
Not all the selections must be drawn from the President’s party, but in fact almost all of them are. In the course of the nomination and election campaigns obligations have been incurred that have to be recognized, if only for the sake of harmony in the President’s coalition...... the Cabinet must reflect some recognition of geographical balance and of the party organizations in the larger states. North, South, East, and West must all be represented....when a Department’s activities are peculiarly concentrated in one section of the country, as those of Interior in the West, its Secretary is expected to be either a resident of the area or publicly identified with it."
The use of the term balance in describing the initial cabinet members of an administration can also be found in current introductory
American government texts. Richard A. Watson writes, "the President is expected to introduce some partisan balance into the makeup of the cabinet....both liberal and conservative elements of a party are usually represented." In addition, most Presidents "have considered it politic to include a southerner in the cabinet; traditionally, the secretary of
Interior comes from the western part of the United States, where most of the vast public lands under the department's jurisdiction are located.
In fact many of the departments have a ’clientele’— that is, particular groups they serve.
In addition, authors of textbooks on the presidency have found
"balance" to be useful in explaining initial appointments to a
President's cabinet. Writing forty years ago, foreign observer Harold
J. Laski, in his chapter on "The President and His Cabinet," describes 32
the composition of the American cabinet. The President
must have one or two men who are likely to be influential with Congress....One,...,must be a person directly expert in the handling of the party machine....There must be representatives of the territorial sections of the country; a cabinet constructed wholly of Easterners would be offensive to the West and the South. There ought desirably, to be representatives of the predominant religions of the United States; a prominent Methodist and an outstanding Catholic layman will always make presidential relations more easy...It ha3 been usual for the secretary of labor to be chosen from the ranks of the important trade unionists.
And, Laski notes, the selection of Frances Perkins by President
Roosevelt to be Secretary of Labor, "may well compel a future president to include a woman in the cabinet as a measure designed to please the women in American, not least in view of their powerful organization in such bodies as the League of Women Voters....A President also has to pay
Q for his nomination and election."
Descriptions of a President's cabinet in terms of the balancing done to obtain a "representative" cabinet have changed little over the past forty years. Writing in 1974, Dorothy Buckton James states that a
President "must appoint individuals to his Cabinet for reasons quite different from their personal loyalty to him. Especially in the initial
Cabinet appointments, he must consider factors of balance in terms of geography, religion, and ethnic background (race and sex may soon be added.)"^
A current textbook on the presidency, written by Robert E.
DiClerico, describes the political considerations affecting Richard
Nixon's cabinet selections. 33
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was his personal choice for secretary of labor, but Nixon also recognized the necessity of appointing someone who would be acceptable to the labor establishment. Accordingly, he decided against Moynihan for the job when he learned that the powerful president of the AFL-CIO objected to Moynihan*s lack of administrative experience. The position was ultimately given to George Shultz, a man the president had never met. The governor of Alaska, Walter Hickel, was picked to be secretary of the interior, in part because President Nixon felt the western part of the country should be represented in the Cabinet....In an attempt to represent the liberal wing of the Republican Party in his administration, Nixon appointed his former political opponent^eorge Romney, as secretary of housing and urban development.
While serving as a description of cabinets, the use of the term balance by writers actually has served as a framework for explaining the role of cabinet members and the cabinet as a collectivity. There are symbolic and political considerations apparent in the President’s selection of cabinet members but a more substantive role is also expected of the cabinet and its secretaries. Richard A. Watson and
Norman C. Thomas write that the "selection of Cabinet members, especially at the outset of an administration, involves the president directly and entails the attempt to build support for the administration by including representatives of various constituencies in the party and 11 in the country."
Others have written of the importance the image of a cabinet conveys to the public. For example, Redford at al write that "a
President must give general consideration to the public impression of his Cabinet. It may need socioeconomic balance or youthful vigor or solid respectability. An appearance of being above merely partisan 34
12 consideration may be important."
Although this chapter is not looking at the role of cabinet
secretaries, it is important to note that the balance framework, used
both explicitly and implicitly by cabinet observers, does imply a future
role for cabinet secretaries. Balance is not merely of symbolic value
to the President or cabinet. If a secretary is selected to "represent"
the interests of farmers, then will serving as a representative for the
farm clientele become a role perception the secretary will assume?
In explaining this functional importance of "representativeness"
Redford et al describe Kennedy’s selection of C. Douglas Dillon as
Secretary of the Treasury:
...several of the departments, notably Agriculture, Commerce, the Treasury, and Labor, are peculiarly identified with distinct segments of society. The relevant organized interest groups make every effort to secure an appointment acceptable to them. Normally, they cannot force the President’s choice, but the man designated is not likely to be clearly objectionable to them. This is understandable, since, for example, a Secretary of the Treasury who was regarded with hostility by the financial and banking community would find it nearly impossible to perform his statutory duties. This was presumably President Kennedy’s reason for naming Douglas Dillon as Secretary of the Treasury. Though he was a Republican who had been ambassador to France and Undersecretary of State in the Eisenhower Administration, Dillon was highly respected in financial circles. Without this confidence a Secretary of the Treasury would also find rough going in his relations with Congress— where every Cabinet officer must earn his spurs. In fact, relations between key committees in the House and Senate and related interest groups are frequently so close that hostility toward a Cabinet officer from either group will almost certainly be reflected in a lack of friendliness from the other.
As can be seen by the above discussion, the concept of balance appears to be well entrenched in the perceptions of those writing about 35
the cabinet. The question then becomes, how useful is this perspective
for understanding the cabinet?
An Illustration of Balance: Political Rewards
In looking at the balance framework there still remains a problem
in perspective. In this section I will briefly identify and explain this problem.
Oftentimes political appointments are viewed in terms of rewards or payoffs for past political support. This is particularly evident in the traditional appointments of past chairs of the Democratic and Republican
National Committees to the post of Postmaster General, reflected in
Truman's appointment of Robert Hannegan and Eisenhower's appointment of
Arthur E. Summerfield. In addition, in recent years it has not been uncommon to appoint one's campaign manager to the post of Attorney
General (e.g., Truman's appointment of James H. McGrath, DNC Chair;
Eisenhower's appointment of Herbert Brownell; and Kennedy's appointment of his brother Robert to this position.) Nixon's appointment of John
Mitchell to the post of Attorney General illustrates the continuation of this trend.11*
Although a number of examples can be mustered to illustrate the use of cabinet posts as "rewards" for past loyalties or political support in 36
the recent electoral contest, perhaps another interpretation might be
had for political appointments. If one examines a President’s electoral
victory, a different interpretation is suggested— that is, an appointment may be made with an eye toward securing an electoral base
for the future. The discussion that follows is limited due to the time
frame of this study. I will not discuss Truman and Johnson since both ascended to the presidency with no need to develop a political coalition of support, and Eisenhower’s electoral victory swept all but the southern states. What follows is a look at one case study— Kennedy’s electoral victory— as a suggestion of an area that should be looked at more carefully to see if this is but one isolated case.
Past political support may garner one of the other cabinet seats instead of the Attorney General or Postmaster General. Kennedy’s selection of North Carolina Governor Luther H. Hodges for the post of
Secretary of Commerce illustrates such an appointment. One article described Hodges as "a soft-spoken former industrialist, who had played a key role in the Kennedy drive to carry the South and also to enlist the political and financial backing of business and professional groups across the country.” In addition, ”the selection of Mr. Hodges, a
Southerner and considered a follower of a middle-of-the-road political philosophy, was regarded by politicians a recognition of the important role Southerners of his political temper had played in the selection of
Senator Kennedy." J The significance of this appointment in terms of political recognition for North Carolina and other Southern states 37
supporting Kennedy in his electoral victory over Nixon is even more
apparent if one holds the view that oftentimes outer cabinet posts are
filled after the inner cabinet posts so as to be sure the completed
cabinet is "balanced." And it is not the most difficult of tasks to
find a businessman from a "desired" or "needed" state. However, in this
instance, Kennedy filled this position before all others. This example
illustrates the most obvious form of political reward.
A subtle additional point is that at times a President may want to
work towards consolidating political strength for subsequent bids for
reelection. And cabinet appointments may serve as one means of building
a more solid basis of support for future electoral needs. In looking at
Kennedy’s electoral college victory in the 1960 presidential election,
there is some evidence of such a move. The selection of J. Edward Day as Postmaster General is a case in point. In Day’s autobiographical
sketch of his days in the Kennedy cabinet, he reflected on the reasons
behind his selection since he had not been active in the 1960 presidential campaign. Day writes, "I think it was simply that the
Kennedy people wanted to include a Californian in the cabinet and I came as near as anyone to being acceptable to all of the factions of the
Party in the State.It is interesting to note that Kennedy lost
California to Nixon in the 1960 election. And if a Californian was desired for a post in the Cabinet, it was best to select someone who would be acceptable to all factions and help consolidate rather than mute political support for future needs. Obviously balance is a factor; how important a factor it is remains open to question. This question 38
will be examined further in looking at role perceptions of the
secretaries in Chapter 3»
A Final Look at Balance
I would suggest that balance in traditional geographical terms is
not substantively as important as has been stated in the literature and
by the press. If geographical balance has any meaning, I would suggest
it serves only as a surrogate for representational or constituent
balance— that is, these individuals will be performing some role,
envisioned by the President and/or secretary, and thereby serve to
fulfill certain needs of the administration. Stating that a President has selected individuals of various backgrounds has no meaning if looked at in isolation, as most writers using this concept have chosen to do.
The concept of balance only has meaning in the context of the role each
secretary is to perform. It is for this reason that Heclo's
identification of issue networks is important as a means of linking the backgrounds of cabinet members with role perception. Especially since
1960, "each White House staff has struggled to find new ways of becoming
less dependent on the crop of applicants produced by normal party
channels and of reaching to new pools of highly skilled executive manpower. The rationale behind these efforts is always that executive
leadership in the bureaucracy requires people who are knowledgeable 39
about complex policies and acceptable to the important groups that claim 17 an interest in the ever growing number of issue areas.”
However, symbolically balance may have a great deal of importance, especially given the emphasis placed on this concept by the media.
Geographic balance does provide a quick handle for the press in its
initial efforts to assess the direction of a new administration. And, of course, the president can ward off potentially negative publicity at the start of an administration by selecting a cabinet that appears to 18 reflect and satisfy public expectations.
As has been demonstrated in this example of Kennedy's use of cabinet positions as political rewards, balance as a theoretical
framework can work. Yet to return to an earlier discussion, some writers have included explanations of the functional importance of a cabinet member along with geographical or constituent balance.
Yet with this functional significance that authors do identify in describing the background characteristics of cabinet members, I find it rather intriguing that geographical categorizations have proven to be the most prevalent in the literature. Perhaps scholars, media analysts, and textbook writers have helped in the constant reinforcement of this notion of geographical representation. But as the growth of government has exponentially taken off at three distinct levels— that is, local, state, and national— perhaps another background characteristic can serve to provide a more useful categorization in an attempt to understand the nature of the President's cabinet. In the remaining sections of this no
chapter I will identify and explain.several other considerations beyond
balance that are necessary to understand the modern cabinet.
FEDERAL SECTOR EXPERIENCE
The media generally focus on the state ties of cabinet appointees,
but this classification is actually more difficult than it may seem. It
is easy to gain information on the place of birth of an appointee.
However, is an individual who has lived and worked in an executive department in Washington for the past seven years still to be classified as, say, a Texan, or might other loyalties (national, or to a department's perspective) be more relevant?
I would like to suggest that although a secretary may have been raised and educated, and kept family and/or business ties with a home
state, a less parochial outlook may have evolved in those individuals who have served in Washington, D.C. at the federal level. And his/her regional ties may actually have been replaced by a greater sense of responsibility to the federal government and its programs and policies.
For example, Fred Vinson is viewed as a Kentuckian, yet served in
Washington, D.C. from 1924 until his appointment as secretary in 1945.
The longer one is away from the demands and pulls of state and local politics, the more removed one can get from the sense of loyalty to, or identification with, the particular quirks and needs of respective states. (And the same can be said of an individual from the midwest who has served as legal counsel for a union or corporation with headquarters in New York City. As will be seen later in this chapter, Hugh Heclo's identification of "Four Great Estates"— academia, corporate and business law, elective politics, and the government bureaucracy— are perhaps more meaningful in understanding the functional importance of background characteristics. As a case in point, J. Edward Day, although viewed as a "Californian" from a balance perspective, actually was born and raised in Illinois and worked for Adlai Stevenson and the state of Illinois until accepting a position with the Prudential Insurance Company that 20 brought him to California in the 1950's. )
To consider a parallel case, it is worth examining evidence about the representational roles of members of Congress. Table 1 shows the 21 results of a "Sample Survey of Over 1*10 House Members." A national focus predominates, along with a claimed sense of independence from district dictates.
If members of Congress, who are selected by districts with constituents of no more than *100,000 members, feel a need to follow their own conscience, and their perceptions of national needs, I would argue that individuals who have served the federal government, especially in the executive branch, also would lose a sense of state identification or loyalty. Therefore, I would question the persistence of cabinet observers in emphasizing the state/geographical representation of a newly composed cabinet. I would instead suggest 42
that another dimension be incorporated in this and future analyses— that is, service in the governmental sector. 43
Table 1: Representatives and Their Districts
The following questions were asked of 140 House Members in 1977:
"Do you feel that you should be primarily concerned with looking after
the needs and interests of your own district, or do you feel that you
should be primarily concerned with looking after the needs and
interests of the nation as a whole?"
Whole nation 45?
Both district and nation 28?
District 24?
Not sure 3?
"When there is a conflict between what you feel is best and what you
think the people in your district want, do you think you should
follow your own conscience, or follow what the people in your
district want?"
Follow own conscience 65?
Depends on the issue 25?
Follow district 5?
Not sure 3?
(Source: "Sample Survey of Over 140 House Members, Final Report,"
Commission on Administrative Review, U.S. House of
Representatives, Vol. 2, December 31, 1977) 44
What appears obvious is that the cabinet has been viewed as a
trapping to the presidency, fulfilling an identification with interests
and interest group needs as a complement to the President's image. But
from another perspective, perhaps cabinet members see themselves as a
balance for the President in terms of his administrative needs. Perhaps
cabinet members are complements— but not in the way an outsider would
define it. The presidency has often been viewed as a well-oiled piece of machinery— and cabinet secretaries can be seen as cogs that are vital to the running of the machine. It is not that an individual is from
the West that makes him or her perfect for the post of Interior.
Rather, it is the experiences the individual brings to the post that provides the "balance" a President may be seeking.
When a President moves to place individuals with strong loyalties and ties to the President in the number two and number three posts throughout the departments, it is then possible for a President to turn to individuals with skills desirable for the top post in each department, regardless of prior loyalties. And especially since the
Rooseveltian Revolution (which greatly enlarged both federal responsibility and the volume of federal programs), it makes sense to include this new set of shared ties and experiences in attempts to explain the President's cabinet. And governmental experience may prove useful as an explanatory variable in further analysis of the cabinet.
Although looking at far more than just the cabinet secretaries,
Hugh Heclo's identification of "four great estates: academia, corporate 45
business and the law, the government bureaucracy, and (to a lesser extent) elective politics," and the movement of individuals "in hierarchies that stretch across the estates," and therefore the emergence of "policy politicians," would seem to be far more accurate an assessment of cabinet recruitment than is geographical or constituent balance. In the following section one of Heclo's four great estates— that of the government bureaucracy— will be examined in some detail.
Analysis of Federal Sector Experience
An examination of the data suggests that federal government experience is an important factor at a number of different levels. As a starting point, if one looks at the location of the last source of employment for each cabinet secretary, it becomes apparent that almost half were employed by the federal government before being tapped for 22 l - ’Vice in the cabinet. 34 of the 71 secretaries included in this study, or 48$, were working in the Washington, D.C. area prior to appointment to the cabinet. That statistic in and of itself is of some
interest. This geographical datum suggests that governmental experience may be a major link serving as a common denominator among cabinet secretaries. It might serve as more of an explanatory factor than do the often cited state or regional backgrounds. Initial and Midterm Appointments
What has been frequently observed by students of the executive branch is that Presidents have come to draw from the ranks of the federal service to fill slots vacant during the course of their administration. As Stanley, Mann and Doig state, "the idea is sometimes advanced that Presidents are more likely to make political executive appointments from within the federal service late in their administrations. At the beginning they tend to appoint from outside
('fresh start,' 'new blood,' 'reward those who helped in the campaign,' and so on). As time goes on, two changes occur: (1) the administration, no longer new, loses some of its appeal to outsiders; and (2) the chief executive gains confidence in federal employees, both 23 career and noncareer." J James J. Best, in examining the cabinet appointments made from 1952 to 1976, observes that a President-elect's criteria for cabinet selection— that is, loyalty, a need to "generate legitimacy for his administration," or a need to "fulfill a pledge to bring 'new blood"' into the administration— is different from the selection criteria used by a President having served in the White House for a period of time. Best notes that only later in his administration does the President realize "that a major segment of a cabinet officer's job is the management of his department and the experience of 'insiders' becomes a primary consideration" in the selection process. 47
Stanley, Mann and Doig tested their assumptions. In looking at top appointments in the executive branch they found that in all the administrations examined in their study, except Truman’s, "the percentage of executives appointed from inside the government rises."
The relatively small decline in the percentages of executives appointed from the federal sector during the course of the Truman Administration can be explained in several ways:
(1) President Truman started high in the proportion of appointments from inside and may well have reached the limit which our political system will tolerate. Truman's low point, however, is nearly as high as Eisenhower’s high point. (2) The end was in sight for his presidency, so federal employees may have been reluctant to accept such vulnerable posts. (3) The sudden beginning of the Korean conflict in 1950 may have resulted in an influx of outsiders to help with the defense effort— although World War II apparently did not have this effect in the Roosevelt administration."
Although Stanley et^ al are including all top presidential appointees in a time frame extending from the beginning of the Roosevelt administration to a point midway through the Johnson administration, a look at the data collected in this study, as well as the data gathered by Best, provides support for their findings. In the 1952 to 1976 time period, Best finds that 37 of 58, or 63-8% of "replacement" appointees came from the federal sector, whereas but 3 of 33> or 9•1% of initial appointees came from the federal sector. Similarly, in the time frame of my study (1945 to 1969), of 41 midterm appointments, 27, or 66$, were moving from one federal government position to another. This is in contrast to a president's initial appointments, where only 7 of 27, or
23$, had been serving in a federal post. Yet on a closer look at the 48
data (see Table 2), it becomes apparent that the nature of the Truman
and Johnson presidencies might have more of an impact on these figures
than is apparent at first glance.
Table 2: Cabinet Members from the Federal Sector (immediate last employment)
# from Federal Total # of % from Federal Administration Sector Appointments Sector Truman 14 21 67%
Eisenhower 7 20 35%
Kennedy 3 13 23%
Johnson 11 15 73%
(N = 69; Secretaries Ickes and Wallace were appointed by Franklin Roosevelt)
Since both Truman and Johnson succeeded to the presidency upon the deaths of Roosevelt and Kennedy, respectively, each inherited a cabinet.
And each President dealt with his holdover cabinet in a different fashion. Truman replaced most of the Roosevelt appointees within the first few months of his administration. In contrast, Johnson retained most of the Kennedy appointees, at least through the end of 1964, when he won the presidency in his own right. (For the purpose of this analysis, all appointments made after the first six months of Truman's administration are considered midterm appointments. All appointments made by Johnson after November, 1964 are considered midterm 27 appointments. ') 49
Since Truman and Johnson have a higher percentage of midterm appointments in their total number of appointments, it is necessary to check if that could be affecting the results. Is it the midterm appointment, or the circumstances of the Truman and Johnson presidencies that leads to the high total of midterm appointments having just completed service in the federal sector? The data (see Table 3) suggest both possibilities.
Table 3: Cabinet Members from the Federal Service
Administration Midterm Appointment Initial Appointment*
Truman 67% (10 of 15) 67$ (4 of 6)
Eisenhower 70$ ( 7 of 10) 20$ (2 of 10)
Kennedy 33$ ( 1 of 3) 20$ (2 of 10)
Johnson 69$ ( 9 of 13) 100$ (2 of 2)
•includes Initial Appointments and Heads of New Departments
Both President Truman and President Johnson, already situated in the executive branch, relied heavily on members of the federal sector in their selection of cabinet secretaries. 67$ of Truman’s appointments were already serving in federal posts, and an even greater percentage,
73$, of Johnson's appointments were ensconced in federal posts. And, as
Table 3 indicates, they were high on selecting members of the federal sector for early as well as midterm appointments. 50
G. Calvin Mackenzie's observations on Truman's selection of many
from within the government is also appropriate in explaining Johnson's heavy reliance on the federal sector, and also Eisenhower’s and
Kennedy's searching beyond the government for cabinet members.
Mackenzie writes, "Because Truman emphasized loyalty and experience in making personnel selections, he chose a larger percentage of his political appointees from within the government than did any of his successors. This tendency was reinforced by several of the circumstances that conditioned his selection. Since the government had been administered by Democrats for twelve years, • Truman had a sizable body of experienced co-partisans from which to choose." Mackenzie further states that Truman's dependence on the federal sector for top executive appointments was not necessarily a "matter of personal preference." World War II and years of defense mobilization had forced many into government service. After the War, many returned to their careers, with little desire "to seek or accept public service opportunities....Truman was further hemmed in by his own limited contacts among people in business, in the professions, and on university faculties. Ultimately the bulk of his personnel selections were made from among those with whom Truman was best acquainted and to whom he had OQ greatest access: government employees."
Similarly, Lyndon Johnson, who had served in the House and Senate for 24 years, undoubtedly ' was more familiar and comfortable with those already steeped in a political tradition and mind-set. In a different 51
vein, although John Kennedy had served in the House and Senate for 14 years, he had not become a leader, or used positions and resources within those bodies to develop the mutual support systems Johnson so ably developed and perfected. Kennedy’s world did not revolve around life in the nation's capital. Similarly, Dwight Eisenhower, although a career employee of the federal government, was removed from the political side of executive branch service until enticed to run for the
Republican presidential nomination in 1952.
And Eisenhower follows the pattern Stanley, Mann and Doig suggested regarding initial appointments as "rewards’’ and "new blood," since he draws from outside the federal sector in making his initial appointments, but when replacements are needed as cabinet secretaries resign during the course of the administration, he does draw from the federal sector in making these appointments.
Kennedy had but three midterm appointments. Had he served longer he too may have fallen into the pattern expected by Stanley et al.
A more parsimonious explanation is that both Kennedy and Eisenhower brought with them a change in partisan control of the White House. As a result, to select co-partisans for the cabinet, each would need to look outside the federal service for initial appointments. In contrast,
Truman and Johnson could turn to the federal service for cabinet members since the Democrats were continuing in power. Yet these data do not permit a full test of this theory since the only cases of two successive 52
presidents of the same party are instances of vice presidential succession upon the death of the elected president. Whether a newly elected president of the same party as his predecessor would necessarily appoint members of the federal sector to his first cabinet or whether he would have to go to outsiders to satisfy the demands of his electoral coalition cannot be clearly answered from these data. Would, for example, Edward Kennedy, had he wrested his party’s nomination from
Jimmy Carter in 1980 and then gone on to defeat Ronald Reagan, have gone to the federal sector for his cabinet appointees, or would he instead have intentionally avoided promoting lower-level appointees of the Carter administration? This question cannot be answered given the available cases, but it does challenge the easy interpretation of Tables
2 and 3 as wholly explicable by partisan factors. 53
THE INNER CABINET AND THE OUTER CABINET
AS A FRAMEWORK FOR CABINET STUDIES
In the following sections the inner and outer cabinet framework will be examined more closely to determine the appropriateness of this
framework to cabinet studies. Recall that the basic distinction is due
to Cronin and it contrasts the role of the Secretaries of Defense,
Treasury, State, and the Attorney General (inner cabinet) as counsellors
to the President on a wide variety of issues with the other Secretaries who are often seen as pleaders for the special interests they administer. 54
The Role of the Inner Cabinet
By all accounts, the inner cabinet members are closer to the
President than the outer cabinet. When one envisions the "inner cabinet," oftentimes images of a kitchen cabinet come into mind— with the President expecting certain loyalties and kinship of thought with those placed in such positions. Disloyalty from these inner cabinet secretaries would be viewed as close to treachery. For example, consider Truman's reaction to a speech given by James Byrnes during the
1948 campaign. In spite of having left the Truman Administration the previous year, the former Secretary of State's criticisms of new
Democratic proposals in Congress supported by Truman were not warmly 29 received by the President. President Truman's letter to James Byrnes in response to a letter Byrnes sent concerning his resignation and speech appears to present a personal bitterness which could only be engendered after a close relationship had been established and then broken. (Truman penned in long-hand the following P.S.: "Since your
Washington and Lee speech I'm sure I know how Caesar felt when he said
'Et tu Brute,'"30)
Is this closeness with the President, particularly on the part of inner cabinet secretaries, one that existed prior to appointment, or is it in the nature of the position and the expectations of that position? 55
Cronin, among others, has suggested the latter. Writing of the inner cabinet, Cronin notes, na pattern in the past few administrations suggests strongly that the inner, or counseling, cabinet positions are vested with high-priority responsibilities that bring their occupants into close and collaborative relationships with presidents and their top
31 staff.F. David Mathews, Secretary of the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare under President Ford, would agree with a functional interpretation of why the inner cabinet becomes counselor to the President. Citing Edward Levi as an example of an inner cabinet member (Ford’s Attorney General) whom Ford did rely on for counsel while not having that past familiar (and familial) tie that Kennedy had with his Attorney General, Mathews states "there is a far less mysterious explanation for all of that that is available, and I wonder why people haven’t turned to it. The President has certain crucial advisors. One, he has got to stay legal. Secondly, he has got to have enough money.
Third, he has got to defend the country. Those are the primary functions of the President. It is only natural that those four departments then have a special relationship to the presidency."J
And if one looks at the members of Kennedy's inner cabinet, he personally met his Secretaries of State and Defense for the first time the week in which he announced their nominations. In announcing the selection of Dean Rusk as Secretary of State, The New York Times states,
"Mr. Rusk, a 51-year-old native of Georgia, is currently president of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York. He has known Senator Kennedy 56
only since they had a thirty-minute chat at the President-elect’s home
in Washington on Thursday.”-’-’ And Secretary of Defense Robert S.
McNamara’s selection also prompted remarks concerning the length of association with President-elect Kennedy. "Senator Kennedy and Mr.
McNamara met for the first time at an unannounced session last Thursday and the President-elect was impressed with his vigor and drive.
Apparently the job offer was made at once, because Mr. McNamara disclosed today that he held a two-hour session Friday with Thomas S.
Gates, Jr., the retiring Secretary of Defense, who had figured earlier Oil in speculation as a Cabinet holdover.”
Cronin has written that "White House aides and inner-cabinet members may be selected primarily on the basis of personal loyalty to the president; outer-cabinet members often are selected to achieve a better political, geographical, ethnic, or racial balance. In addition to owing loyalty to their president, these people must develop loyalties to the congressional committees that approved them or those that finance their programs, to the laws and programs they administer, and to the clientele and career civil servants who serve as their most immediate
0 5 jury."J While I will not dispute the latter of these statements at this point I do wonder if perhaps undue emphasis has been placed on the selection of inner cabinet members for their personal loyalty to the
President, especially as in the case of Kennedy’s inner cabinet
(excluding his brother Robert), where these members were unknown to the
President prior to their final selection. It would seem that it is the nature of the position that lends itself to the fostering of close, 57
personal ties, if the relationship succeeds.^
In the following section, I will examine the background characteristics of these cabinet secretaries to determine the usefulness of the inner and outer cabinet distinction, To begin this analysis, a discussion of the past work experience of an individual will be included as a means of garnering objective criteria for evaluating the inner and outer cabinet framework. 58
Inner and Outer Cabinet: Federal Governmental Experience
To begin an exploration of the inner and outer cabinet framework, I will analyze past federal governmental experience of the cabinet secretaries in this study. A look at the raw frequencies for each cabinet post (see Table 4), as well as an aggregate look at past experience (see Table 5) reveals a difference in the extent of past 07 federal governmental experience for inner and outerJ cabinet secretaries. As indicated in Table 5, all of the inner cabinet departments had a majority of secretaries appointed from the federal sector. In the case of the outer cabinet, at most one half of the secretaries came directly from the federal sector, except in two instances— the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the
Department of Transportation. And in both of those departments there is a low number of cases due to the addition of these departments to the
Cabinet in the 1960’s. Also, both departments had initial cabinet secretaries appointed who had been serving in related functions in other departments while assisting in the birth and development of these new departments. 59
Table 4: Last Source of Employment
if Working for Federal Total Number of Inner Cabinet Government Secretaries aState 4b 6
Treasury 4C 7 aDefense 3d 9
Attorney General 5 8
TOTALS: 18 30 (60$)
Outer Cabinet
Postmaster General 3 7
Interior 3 6
Agriculture 2 4
Commerce 4 9
Labor 3 6
HEW 2 7
HUD 2 2
Transportation 1 1
TOTALS: 20 42 (48$) aSecretary Marshall is included in the tallies for both posts. ^Includes James F. Byrnes, who had just retired to his home in Spartanburg, S.C., as Director of the War Mobilization and Reconversion Board and was contemplating a return to law practice, and John F. Dulles, who left the State Department in April of 1952 to campaign for the Republican Party and serve as foreign policy advisor for presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower. c Includes John W. Snyder, who had just retired as Director of the War Mobilization and Reconversion Board. d Includes Clark Clifford, lawyer and Chair of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board on a part-time basis. 60
Table 5: Last Employed in the Federal Sector
Number of Number of Inner Cabinet Outer Cabinet Departments Departments
Over one half of secretaries drawn from federal sector
One half of secretaries drawn from federal sector
Less than one half of secretaries drawn from federal sector
TOTALS:
But perhaps examining federal sector experience is not the best of measures to determine what, if any, distinctions can be made between the inner cabinet and the outer cabinet. Employment in the federal sector can cover a wide range of positions— from that of civil servant in the
Post Office Department, to U.S. Representative . jr a farm constituency.
The nature of federal governmental service may yet prove useful in understanding the cabinet in terms of an inner cabinet and outer cabinet framework. In the following section, the nature of federal governmental service, as well as governmental service outside of the federal sector, will be examined. 61
The Inner and Outer Cabinet: Prior Governmental Service
As another means of structurally examining the composition of the cabinet and testing the distinction between the inner and outer cabinet,
I have examined the past governmental experience of all secretaries.
Table 6 examines more carefully the exact nature of previous government service. As can be seen in Table 6, in all positions, a greater percentage of outer than inner cabinet members had some experience in state and local politics. This is in contrast to federal govenment experience, where a greater percentage of inner cabinet than outer cabinet secretaries had served in some capacity in their departments before service as secretary. The most startling contrast is that nearly half of all inner cabinet members served as Deputy or
Assistant Secretary, but only 20% of outer cabinet members had similar experience. 62
Table 6: Governmental Experience
? having some state and/or local governmental experience:
Governor Judge State Legislature Local Govt Mayor Other
Inner 6.9? 3.4? 10.3? — — 6.9?
? having some federal governmental experience:
Deputy/ White House Assistant Staff (this Federal U.S. House U.S. Senate Secretary administration) Judge
Inner 17.2? 10.3? 48.3? 3.4? 10.3? Outer 7.1? 7.1? 19.5? 9.8? 2.4?
? having some experience on national boards or as agency heads: National Board Agency Head
Inner 31.0? 10.3? Outer 40.5? 9.8?
(N = 71; Inner Cabinet: 29; Outer Cabinet: 42) 63
Did the inner cabinet members tend more toward careerism in the
federal sector? Were they thus of more generalist backgrounds, having hopped from one department to another? Were they therefore no more expert on the issues facing them as department head than would be the case for outer cabinet secretaries? While this is plausible, I found no difference between the inner cabinet and outer cabinet secretaries regarding their experience across departments. 24.1% (7 of 29) of the inner cabinet and 23.8% (10 of 42) of the outer cabinet had prior department experience in a department other than the current one in which they were serving (however, for the most part cabinet secretaries in both inner and outer departments had gained this other-department experience in the inner cabinet departments of State, Defense, Treasury, Og or Justice). Therefore, the federal governmental experience upon which the inner cabinet is drawing from is that of past experience in the department which they are now heading.
In looking at differences between the inner and outer cabinet for each administration the same pattern holds true across time, as illustrated in Table 7 which gives the percentages of those having served as Deputy/Assistant Secretary in the same department. 64
Table 7: Prior Service as Deputy or Assistant Secretary in the Same Department
Administration Inner Cabinet Outer Cabinet cn O Truman 54..5% (6 of 11) • 0% (3 of 10)
Eisenhower 33..3% (3 of 9) 9. 1* (1 of 11) CVJ in Kennedy ,0% (1 of 4) 11.1* (1 of 9) CO o Johnson ,0% (4 of 5) 30. 0% (3 of 10)
Once again the differences between the Truman and Johnson administrations and the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations are striking. Truman and Johnson again relied more heavily on those already in place in the government to serve as both their inner cabinet department heads as well as their outer cabinet department heads. Yet in all cases, more of the inner cabinet secretaries had served as Deputy or Assistant Secretary than did outer cabinet secretaries. But does this similarity continue when one turns to non-governmental backgrounds of cabinet secretaries? 65
The Inner Cabinet and the Outer Cabinet;
Non-governmental Experience
To look at two areas— that of predominant employment, and past education— one finds considerable similarity across departments. On the average, only 21% of all cabinet secretaries in this study have had extensive business backgrounds. 62$ have had post graduate education, with 46$ having received legal training.
However, two departments show different patterns. Indeed, a striking parallel develops between the secretaries of Defense and
Commerce that is not found in common with any of the other cabinet departments over time. 67$ of all Defense secretaries and 55.6$ of all
Commerce secretaries had business backgrounds. This pattern, with
Defense and Commerce secretaries exhibiting similarities not shared with the other departments, is reinforced when the educational backgrounds of secretaries are examined.
In all departments except Commerce and Defense, over one half of the secretaries had post-college training whereas in Commerce but 22.2$ of the secretaries had pursued post-baccalaureate education, and only
50$ of the Defense secretaries had pursued advanced study upon college graduation. The lack of post-baccalaureate training is reflected in the absence of law degrees by many of the Secretaries of Commerce and
Defense. Only 25$ of the secretaries of Defense, and 22.2$ of the secretaries of Commerce had received training in the law. The only other cabinet post having nearly as few lawyers is that of the 66
Postmaster General (28.6$). Post-graduate training is needed for law and for academic positions, but is not the traditional route for those starting out and advancing in the business sector.
This similarity in the Defense and Commerce Departments begins to suggest that some modifications of the inner/outer cabinet distinction may be appropriate. Whether these differences will persist will be determined in the next chapter as the job orientation of respective cabinet members is examined.
CONCLUSIONS
The research findings presented here do suggest the viability of the inner/outer cabinet distinction as a categorization scheme from which to begin both further discussion and analysis of the President's cabinet. The work of Heclo in identifying four great estates between which high level policy specialists travel seems valuable as a means of linking the recruitment of individuals to the subsequent role expectations in a given administration. Role perceptions will be the subject of the next chapter. In addition, the introduction of a new perspective on the composition of a President's cabinet, i.e., past federal governmental experience, seems to be far more useful than the traditional notion of balance in explaining recruitment of cabinet 67
secretaries.
With this dimension, I found the distinctions between the inner and outer cabinets to be significant in several ways: 1.) each of the inner cabinet departments found a majority of cabinet appointees presently in federal government service, whereas in only two of the eight departments of the outer cabinet did a majority of cabinet appointees come directly from the federal sector, and those two departments were limited in the number of cases in this study due to their recent inclusion in the cabinet. The first secretaries to head these new departments (Housing and Urban Development and Transportation) experienced a change in title and status as opposed to a shift from one set of responsibilities in the federal sector to a different set of responsibilities. 2.) there are differences in types of governmental experience for the inner cabinet secretary as compared to the outer cabinet secretary— the inner cabinet secretary’s past governmental experience more likely is from the federal sector, whereas more of the outer cabinet secretaries have had substantial state and local governmental experience. And in looking at prior departmental service, and therefore assumed greater expertise (or at least familiarity with the department), 72% of the inner cabinet had served in the same department in the past, whereas but 28^ of the outer cabinet had gained similar experience; and 3.) half of the inner cabinet secretaries had received prior departmental experience in the position of Deputy or Assistant Secretary, whereas but 20J of the outer cabinet had so served. 68
All of the above patterns are found to hold across administrations. There is also a similarity in the recruitment and selection of cabinet secretaries by Presidents Truman and Johnson.
This reflects the nature of their ascendancy to the presidency upon the deaths of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, respectively. Already serving in the Executive Branch as Vice
President, both of these Presidents relied more heavily on the familiar federal sector for their appointments than did Presidents Eisenhower and
Kennedy. Both Eisenhower and Kennedy had to acquire a familiarity and confidence in the federal sector before drawing from that body for appointments. And since Truman and Johnson were succeeding to an already established Democratic Administration, they did not face the prospects Eisenhower and Kennedy found themselves in as each brought with them a partisan change to the White House.
The common business background of the Secretaries of Commerce and
Defense is one area that can be examined more closely to see if there are further commonalities. Are there similarities in role perception, or political bases of support? Perhaps both departments are not described best in their respective inner cabinet/outer cabinet frameworks and a better fit can be had by joining these two departments in a third category. That is a question that will be examined more closely in the next two chapters. 69
Chapter 2: Footnotes
G. Calvin Mackenzie, The Politics of Presidential Appointments (New York; The Free Press']! 1981); Stephen Hess, Organizing the Presidency (Washington, D.C.; The Brookings Institution, 1976); David J. Stanley, Dean E. Mann, and Jameson W. Doig, Men Who Govern (Washington, D.C.; The Brookings Institution, 1967).
2New York Times, July 1, 1945, p. 16, col. 5.
^New York Times, July 7, 19*15, p. 1, col. 1.
li W. H. Lawrence, "Kennedy Moves to Ease the Transition," New York Times, November 20, 1960, sec. 4, p. 5, col. 1.
c Emmette S. Redford, David B. Truman, Alan F. Westin, Robert C. Wood, Politics and Government in the United States, 2nd ed., National, State, and Local Edition (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1968), p. 338.
^Richard A. Watson, Promise and Performance of American Democracy, 4th ed., National Edition (New York; John Wiley and Sons, 1981), pp. 383-384.
» 7 Harold J. Laski, The American Presidency, an Interpretation (New York: Harper and Brothers, 19*10), pp. 78-79.
8Ibid.
Q Dorothy Buckton James, The Contemporary Presidency, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 197*0, pp. 1*17-148.
^Robert E. DiClerico, The American President, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1983), p. 198.
Richard A. Watson and Norman C. Thomas, The Politics of the Presidency (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1983), p. 287. 70
^Redford et al, p. 339•
13From POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, Second Edition, National, State and Local Edition by Emmette S. Redford, David B. Truman, Alan F. Westin and Robert C. Wood, copyright © 1968 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, p. 338.
14 This is especially true in light of the lessening importance of the post of Postmaster General, eventually leading to a change in status from a member of the President's cabinet to the head of a semi-independent public corporation. ("Postmaster General to Remain as Chief of Postal Service," New York Times, January 14, 1971, p. 24).
15 New York Times, November 13, 1960, p. 1, col. 8.
1^J. Edward Day, My Appointed Round: 929 Days as Postmaster General, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 19£>5), P* 3.
17 Hugh Heclo, "Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment," in Anthony King, The New American Political System (Washington, D. C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), p. 10$.
18 see Richard F. Fenno, Jr., "Now is the Time for Cabinet Makers," New York Times, November 20, 1960, sec. 6, p. 88. Fenno writes, as the President selects his Cabinet, "he tries to choose a Cabinet which commands broad popular support. The requisite here is that the group reflect the diversity of American political life— that it be, in Cabinet vernacular, 'well-balanced.1 Every President is anxious to float his Administration on an early wave of popular approval; he tries to anticipate public reactions while selecting it. If its reception is friendly he has survived a critical test of public confidence."
1Q Robert Sobel, Biographical Directory of the United States Executive Branch (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Co., 1971).
20 Heclo, "Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment," p. 108; background information on cabinet secretaries can be obtained from Robert Sobel, Biographical Directory of the United States Executive Branch. 71
21 "Sample Survey of Over 100 House Members," Final Report, Commission on Administrative Review, U.S. House of Representatives, vol. 2 (December 31, 1977) in James MacGregor Burns, J.W. Peltason and Thomas E. Cronin, Government by the People, 11th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 198f), pp. 870, 890.
22 This figure includes Harold L. Ickes, appointed Secretary of Interior by Roosevelt, but serving under Truman through mid-March of 19**6, and Henry A. Wallace, appointed to the post of Secretary of Commerce just prior to Roosevelt's death and serving under Truman through September of 19*16.
23 David J. Stanley et aJL, Men Who Govern.
2*1 James J. Best, "Presidential Cabinet Appointments: 1953 to 1976," Presidential Studies Quarterly (Winter 1981), p. 66.
25 David J. Stanley et al^, Men Who Govern, pp. 51-53.
26 James J. Best, "Presidential Cabinet Appointments: 1956 to 1976," p. 63.
27 'Therefore, the midterm appointments for Truman are: Dean Acheson, Charles Brannan, Oscar Chapman, Jesse Donaldson, James Forrestal, William A. Harriman, Louis Johnson, Julius Krug, Robert Lovett, George Marshall, James McGranery, James McGrath, Charles Sawyer, John Snyder, and Maurice Tobin. The midterm appointments for Johnson are: Joseph Walker Barr, Ramsey Clark, Clark Clifford, Wilbur J. Cohen, John T. Connor, Henry H. Fowler, John W. Gardner, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, Lawrence F. O'Brien, Cyrus R. Smith, Alexander Trowbridge, William Watson, and Robert C. Wood.
28 Mackenzie, The Politics of Presidential Appointments, pp. 12-13.
29 Harry S. Truman, Memoirs by Harry S. Truman, 2 vols. (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday and Company, Inc. 19567^
OQ Harry S. Truman, Letter to James F. Byrnes, June 21, 19*19» PSF-Cabinet, "Secretary of State— James F. Byrnes," Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. 72
Thomas E. Cronin, The State of the Presidency, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975), p. 191.
Op David F. Mathews, interview, Kettering, Ohio, May 27, 1982.
OO New York Times, Fecember 13, 1960, p. 1, col. 1
New York Times, December 14, 1960, p. 1, col. 8.
35 Cronin, The State of the Presidency, pp. 197-198.
John Kessel has suggested that the time of Cronin's research, conducted late in Johnson's term and in the post-1970 phase of the Nixon Administration, may lead to Cronin's strong statements concerning loyalty since by this time the close relationship presumably would have been established.
37 Although the position of Postmaster General as head of a cabinet department was abolished by the time Cronin's inner/outer cabinet classification was identified, for the purposes of this analysis the Postmaster General has been placed in the outer cabinet. Cronin writes, regarding the inner cabinet, "The occupants of these cabinet positions generally have maintained a role as counselor to the president; the departments all include broad-ranging, multiple interests." (Thomas E. Cronin, The State of the Presidency, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975, p. 191) While the Postmaster General, especially as Chair of the National Party Committee, has had a broad advising role to the president, the interests of the Department and the Postmaster General's relationship with the Department has been more focused— that is, on moving the mail in as effective a manner as possible. Therefore the Department appears to fit more logically in the outer cabinet grouping.
Of the inner cabinet secretaries, 2 worked in the State Department, 1 in the Treasury Department, 3 in the Defense Department, and 1 in the Commerce Department. Of the outer cabinet secretaries, 2 worked in the State Department, 4 in the Defense Department, 1 in the Department of the Interior, 2 in the Commerce Department, and 1 worked in both the State Department and Defense Department. CHAPTER 3; ROLE PERCEPTION
How the President and the respective cabinet secretary each perceive the role to be assumed by the secretary sets the stage for the either harmonious or incongruent working relationship that will mark the secretary's tenure in office. In this chapter I will first explain a cabinet framework that, although not appropriate in discussing the recruitment characteristics of cabinet secretaries in Chapter 2, may be appropriate in explaining role perception— that is, the "naive” view of the cabinet. After explaining this framework I will then discuss methodology— how were the materials and documents culled to ascertain an individual secretary's role perception? Following this discussion of methodological techniques and procedures I will then explore role perceptions of the President's cabinet by Administration and then by
Department. Finally, after this longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the cabinet I will then explore the various frameworks identified in this study in terms of their appropriateness in explaining the role perceptions of cabinet secretaries (that is, the inner and outer cabinet distinction, midterm versus initial appointments, a
"naive" view of the cabinet, balance, and issue networks).
73 THE "NAIVE" VIEW OF THE CABINET
Before examining the role perception of cabinet secretaries it is
necessary to explore another framework, not yet discussed in Chapter
Two— that is, the "naive" view of the cabinet. Cronin has identified a
"textbook presidency" mindframe that has influenced those writing on the
presidency. As Cronin writes,
Introductory American government textbooks and related political writings in the 1950s and 1960s endorsed the activist, purposeful, power-maximizing model of presidential leadership. They often glorified the manipulative leader, and almost all of them exaggerated to some degree past and future presidential performance. Such distortion risked misleading students and leaders alike about the invention and carrying out of creative civic and political responsibilities. Moreover, these writings hardly prepared the nation for the abuses of presidential power witnessed during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Perhaps some of the distorted interpretations of what a president could and should accomplish actually encouraged some of these abuses. .... The term textbook presidency, used here for convenience, applies not only to these formal works, most of them by professors of political science, but also to those similar images of presidential power and personality that were promulgated through the press and the broadcast media by reporters, columnists, and commentators working under the pressure of tight deadlines. The total effect, deliberate or not, was to create almost out of whole cloth a larger-than-life image of the presidency, an evocative iconolatry that has often had grievous consequences.
Does a similarly distorted view— that is, a certain naivete about the role of the cabinet and cabinet secretaries exist? If such a perspective is identifiable, for whom does it exist, and at what point
in time in an administration? Have Presidents, the press, or even 75
cabinet secretaries as a body perpetuated the myth of an ideal cabinet, consisting of a set of collegial advisors to the President that the
President will convene on a regular basis so as to gather a collective wisdom concerning the direction of his administration? Does a certain naive way of thinking tend to show up at the outset of new administrations, especially on the part of certain members? And what have authors of introductory textbooks on American government or the presidency written in describing the role of the President's cabinet? In the following sections I will examine the perspectives on the cabinet as stated by textbook writers, Presidents, the press, and cabinet secretaries.
Textbooks and the President's Cabinet
Richard A. Watson and Norman C. Thomas, in The Politics of The
Presidency, describe and contrast the expectations surrounding
Presidential-cabinet relationships with the actual experience of these individuals. They write,
Most modern presidents have come to office determined to make more effective use of the Cabinet than their predecessors did. The public has tended to applaud candidates' pledges that the Cabinet will play a major decision-making role in their administrations. Yet, with the possible exception of Dwight Eisenhower, presidents have not utilized their cabinets as as vehicles of collective leadership....This gap between expectations and experience suggests that there is a widespread lack of understanding of the Cabinet on the part of the public and most political leaders.... 76
Watson and Thomas go on to explain the "misunderstanding of the
Cabinet." There is a "tendency to regard it as somewhat analogous to
the cabinet in parliamentary regimes, where it functions as an executive council with whom the prime minister is obliged to consult and where it shares with him responsibility for governmental actions."^
In reviewing American government textbooks as well as textbooks
focusing on the American presidency, it becomes clear that these writers have described a gap in expectations between what the President, cabinet secretaries, press, and public initially envision as the role for the cabinet versus the actual role of the cabinet during the course of the administration. Yet the authors of textbooks have not fallen into the same pattern of high expectations for a cabinet role that cannot and does not exist.
James Q. Wilson bluntly states, "the cabinet is a product of tradition and hope. There once was a time when .the heads of the federal departments met regularly with the president to discuss matters, and some persons, especially those critical of strong presidents, would like to see this kind of collegial decision-making reestablished. But, in fact, the cabinet is largely a fiction."1* The gap in expectations between what the President and cabinet initially perceive to be the role of a cabinet secretary and the subsequent reality of the actual role, although noted by scholars, still plagues Presidents and their initial appointees. 77
Frank Kessler also describes the strong rooted tradition of a cabinet as a collegial set of advisors to the President. He writes that tradition "has labeled the cabinet as the major collective advisors to the president, so each administration seems to feel honor bound to profess its allegiance to a 'strong' cabinet. It could well be that presidents fully intend to reinvigorate the cabinet, but find that these moves, while theoretically attractive, are practically unworkable.”
Kessler notes that in recent years all Presidents from Truman through Reagan, with the exception of John Kennedy, entered the ”Oval
Office promising to cut staff and reinvigorate the advisory role of the cabinet....However, cabinet members who had been ushered in with great fanfare soon found it virtually impossible to get their views to the president.Walter Dean Burnham notes that a number of presidents have worked closely with some members of the cabinet, but the cabinet itself has not been used as a decision-making body. In describing the last two administrations Burnham notes that both "Presidents Carter and Reagan started out by attempting to raise the status of the cabinet, and both came to rely on loyalists within the bowels of the White House."'
Thomas Cronin joins those listed above in describing the failure of a President's cabinet to match expectations that it will serve "as a g committee of key advisors." But as Cronin indicates, scholars have long viewed the cabinet in less than idealized terms. Cronin describes
"Harold Laski's 19^0 description of what a good cabinet should be" as
"one of the best." Laski succinctly identifies why modern presidents do 78
not have an idealized cabinet of collegial advisors:
A good cabinet ought to be a place where the large outlines of policy can be hammered out in common, where the essential strategy is decided upon, where the president knows that he will hear, both in affirmation and in doubt, even in negation, most of what can be said about the direction he proposed to follow. The evidence, I think, makes it clear that few American cabinets have been of this quality; they have not been a team of first-rate minds pooling their ideas in common. And until they become by deliberate construction, as near such a team as it is possible for a president to make, he will not have at his disposal the basic-human resources he needs to grapple with his formidable task.
That Presidents have initial expectations of a cabinet serving as a set of collegial advisors is indisputable according to statements made by Presidents at the start of their term of office. And textbooks have emphasized this expectation on the part of Presidents. Robert E.
DiClerico, in discussing the cabinet's role in the past 40 years, notes that during the Truman through Johnson administrations each President began his term of office with full cabinet meetings.10 But the frequency of such meetings and attendance of the full cabinet quickly dropped. DiClerico joins several other authors in noting the abrupt transition of Richard Nixon from wanting a cabinet of independent thinkers to a cabinet of "yes-men," as recorded in Richard P. Nathan's
The Plot That Failed. As Richard Nixon introduced his cabinet to the
American public on national television on December 11, 1968, he concluded by stating,"'I don't want a Cabinet of 'Yes" men and I don't think you want a Cabinet of "Yes" men. Every man in the Cabinet will be urged to speak out in the Cabinet and within the Administration on all the great issues so that the decisions we will make will be the best 11 decisions we can possibly reach.'" 79
DiClerico also recalls Jimmy Carter's initial comments on his cabinet, three years prior to the purges and reshuffling of cabinet members in the summer of 1979. Carter remarked, "'I believe in Cabinet administration of our government. There will never be an instance while
I am President where members of the White House staff dominate or act in 12 a superior position to the members of our Cabinet.’"
Kessler provides further illustration of the change that occurs in a President's initial plans for the cabinet to actual cabinet performance. Kessler notes that of recent presidents only Kennedy initially had any qualms about the role of the cabinet.
Close Kennedy aide Theodore Sorensen said that the administration only held cabinet meetings because they were traditional and the public expected them....His attitude toward the collective advice role of the cabinet was plain to his staffers; as one aide remembers shortly after the inauguration in 1961, Kennedy asked, "Just what the hell good does the Cabinet do anyway?"
Before coming to some conclusion concerning the validity of the
"naive cabinet" perspective as an accurate descriptor of writings on the cabinet, I want to turn to the other half of Cronin's thesis— that is, that the term "textbook presidency" applies not only to formal works by political scientists, "but also, to those similar images of presidential power and personality that were promulgated through the press and the broadcast media by reporters, columnists, and commentators working under the pressure of tight deadlines."11* 80
The Press
James MacGregor Burns et al note the emphasis given the advising
role of the cabinet as a collectivity by the press.
Cabinet members, as individuals, are often important advisers and administrators. But the cabinet as a decision-making body is not as important as press accounts would have us believe. At present it would take a leap of the imagination to think of cabinet meetings as a place where the large outlines of policy are hammered out in common, or where the essential strategy is decided upon.
The trappings surrounding cabinet appointments at the start of an administration, and as reported by the press, can be quite elaborate,
fueling expectations that this President will use the cabinet as a set of collegial advisors. President Nixon's initial cabinet appointments will long be remembered for the parading of his newly selected set of advisors before a prime time television audience. A group photo of a newly constituted cabinet is bound to appear in the major newspapers.
Perhaps the most consistent reporting of cabinet secretaries' ideas and goals takes place during the first few weeks following announcement to the post and subsequent confirmation by the Senate. Without fail, The
New York Times, at least during the time period of this study, duly recorded the announcement of each cabinet secretary-designate on the
front page. (The only variation detected being that inner cabinet secretaries were usually given p. 1, column 6 or 8 coverage^, while outer cabinet secretaries were relegated to p. 1, column 1 coverage.) 81
Before turning to a final assessment of the usefulness of the
"naive" view of the cabinet framework for cabinet studies it would seem appropriate to examine what presidents have envisioned as the expected
role for their newly appointed cabinet.
The President’s Perspective
Just what has been the view of the Presidents in this study as to
their expectations concerning the role of the cabinet? As noted by
Kessler above, only John Kennedy, of recent Presidents, did not seem to share in the idealized vision of a collegial set of advisors reviewing policy and advising the President on a wide range of topics. In the speeches or messages given by Kennedy that are included in the Public 17 Papers of the Presidents of the United States series there is barely a mention of the cabinet as a collectivity (although there are references to respective members of his cabinet.) For example, during his first year of office, the only mention of the cabinet included in the index comes during the White House Swearing-in-Ceremony for the new secretaries and Kennedy's words on this occasion are quite brief.
Describing expectations held for this new cabinet Kennedy succinctly stated:
Quite obviously, whatever success we may achieve will * depend in great part upon their dedication and their effort, and the success which they achieve will depend in good 82
part upon the dedication and effort of the hundreds of thousands of men and women of this country who serve our National Government.
Even in Kennedy’s State of the Union message to Congress on January
30, 1961, there is little indication of any distinctive role envisioned for members of his cabinet that would make their role different from that of any other public servant in the Executive branch. Kennedy stated:
I have pledged myself and my colleagues in the cabinet to a continuous encouragement of initiative, responsibility and energy in serving the public’s interest. Let every public servant know, whether his post is high or low, that a man’s rank and reputation in this Administration will be determined by the size of the Job he does, and not by the size of his staff, his office or his budget. Let it be clear that this Administration recognizes the value of dissent and daring— that we greet healthy controversy as the hallmark of healthy change. 9
In the remaining years of his public presidency there is no mention of the cabinet as a collectivity listed in the index to his public papers.
However, during the first year of their term of office, the other three Presidents of this study did express their belief in, and expectation of, the cabinet serving as a set of collegial advisors.
For example, although Truman made few public references to his cabinet in the first few months following his succession to the
Presidency, except as concerned the continued service of his inherited cabinet, by the time he had begun to make major changes in the cabinet in the fall of 19^5 he was espousing the position that the cabinet should serve as evaluators and advisors on a wide range of public policy 83
issues. For instance, when Truman sent a proposal to Congress recommending the creation of a Department of Defense combining the
Departments of War, Navy and the Air Force, he wrote that
the Cabinet is not merely a collection of executives administering different governmental functions. It is a body whose combined judgment the President uses to formulate the fundamental policies of the administration. In such a group, which is designed to develop teamwork wisdom on all subjects that affect the political life of the country, it would be inappropriate and unbalanced to have three members representing three different instruments of national defense.
Similarly, as has been noted above, Eisenhower is often used to provide an example of the collegial use of a cabinet. In an address to
Republican loyalists early in his first term of office giving insight as to what really goes on in Washington, Eisenhower described the role of the cabinet:
If I could really bring you an accurate picture of what goes on, it would be done in this way: if I could take each American— each vote— in this country and take you down, one day, to a Cabinet meeting, and allow you to sit there while there came before that body some problem involving the welfare of the United States of America, and for you to see the honest, devoted, studious way in which that problem is pulled to pieces in all its elements. There is discussed every factor that can seemingly affect this country, and from one broad general viewpoint: what is good for the whole country.
A month later, Eisenhower reinforces this vision of the cabinet as a collegial set of advisors at another Republican gathering:
The Cabinet can be whatever kind of body the administration wants. It can, on the one hand, be a score of heads that do nothing but nod, in near array— a kind of agreeable approval of everything proposed by the President. It can be, in the extreme, a babel of discordant voices in which the prize of decision belongs to the loudest voice. The present Cabinet, I assure you, belongs to 84
neither of these futile extremes. It is a group of capable and purposeful individuals. They give advice candidly and thoughtfully, speaking their several minds freely and lucidly to but one purpose— to offer the best, the wisest programs within their power for all our 160 million citizens. And this applies to the Republican leaders of the Senate and the House as well as the offices of the Cabinet.
Johnson found himself in the same position as Truman— that is succeeding to the Presidency upon the death of the President and thereby inheriting a cabinet. Although initial remarks concerning the retention of cabinet members from the previous administration were the same
(Truman, when asked at his first news conference as to what he could say about the Cabinet, responded: "Of course, I asked the Cabinet to 2^ remain. That is as much as I want to say," J and Johnson, addressing a gathering within two months of Kennedy's assassination, similarly remarked: "One of the great legacies President Kennedy left me was the finest Cabinet that any President could assemble. They are so good that
I didn't even want one of my own. I wanted all of them to stay right 24 where they are" ) these two Presidents acted in different fashions concerning these holdover appointments. Whereas Johnson retained the bulk of Kennedy's cabinet, Truman shortly instituted an almost total turnover in cabinet composition.
But as Truman did perceive a collegial advising role for his cabinet, so too did Johnson, even for those cabinet members he did not appoint to office. In June of 1965, at a news conference, Johnson outlined the role of the cabinet in international affairs:
We will have a thorough review and discussion of the international situation, and U.S. policies. I will ask the Secretary of State to review the dozen or more diplomatic 85
proposals and initiatives that we have considered and received and proposed, so that all members of the Cabinet may evaluate and discuss them and be informed about them in greater detail than has been permitted before. In addition, we will explore with members of the Cabinet certain other hopes for peace that we are evaluating and considering. The Secretary of Defense will report on the status of the men in uniform,...,the commitments that we have made to certain areas of the world. That will be thoroughly and carefully reviewed and members of the Cabinet will make— those not on the National Security Council— the Secretary of the Treasury is, and the Attorney General comes frequently, and of course, the Vice President is always there— but others will make any suggestions that they come to, and very likely will make some suggestions to new initiatives which we have already tried, and some unsuccessfully. 86
The "Naive" View of the Cabinet— Another Look
It does appear as if textbook writers, while not harboring
expectations of a cabinet that will actually meet en masse and
collectively debate and recommend policy to the President, have still
helped to keep the idea of an idealized cabinet alive by stating
presidential expectations and later, presidential disappointments. This
"naive" view of the cabinet is analogous to the "textbook presidency"
mindset Cronin has identified in that the reality of these two
institutions— the presidency and the cabinet— tends to be hidden, even
though textbook authors have been more accurate than new presidents and
new secretaries in their descriptions of the cabinet. An important
point to consider is that textbooks currently in use may present the
cabinet in a different light than those of an earlier period. As Cronin
has indicated, there has been a change in the coverage of the President
by those writers of the 1970's and 1980's in comparison with those writers of the 1950's and 1960's. Laski, a3 noted above, did not
envision the cabinet as serving a collective advising role to the
President. But he was a foreign observer of the American political
process and far more familiar with a system of government that was
conducive to cabinet government— England's parliamentary system— than
American writers would be. As a result, it is possible that the
difficulties with a collective cabinet advisory system in the context of 87
the American Executive were far more apparent to Laski than to American writers.
As stated in Chapter One, Edward S. Corwin, writing on the state of the President’s cabinet in the 19^0's, identifies the failures of cabinet government in the United States as due to the type of individual appointed to the cabinet, suggesting that with individuals of proper
"breadth of outlook" a cabinet of broad political and policy advisors could be possible:
The truth is that the Cabinet has in our day become of negligible importance in the determination of national policy. Why is this? Doubtless the personal element has often operated to depress the Cabinet’s role in the policy field. But when so variable a factor repeatedly produces the same result there must be an underlying constant factor at work. The Cabinet is of negligible influence in the shaping of broad governmental policies because it is composed of men whose principal business is that of administration and who, consequently, even when they are not administrative experts at the outset, are required to become such. Unfortunately, an expert in a particular area of governmental activity is not likely to possess the breadth of outlook which is most desirable in a political adviser, or the time or inclination to interest himself in the problems of other departments or of the country at large.
Similarly, Cronin cites Henry Fairlie's description of an ideal cabinet that could serve as a set of counsellors to the President and
Fairlie's faulting of Kennedy for not making use of this set of collegial advisors:
"The criticism is not so much of John Kennedy's unwillingness to use the Cabinet but of the reasons he gave for not using it. He does not appear to have understood the qualities which are even more valuable than intelligence and competence: that political judgment— at its highest, political wisdom— is often to be found where one would least be inclined to look for it, in men who digress, or who are slow, or who 88
have no ready point to make, but who are feeling their way to an unformed doubt in their minds. Above all, he appears to have been trapped by his beliefs that he needed the advice only of those who were directly concerned with the problem. But those who are handling a problem, however much they differ, have to establish very early a frame of reference within which they can contain their differences, and that frame of reference then becomes fixed, and those acting within it find it hard to escape."
But other writers of an earlier period did not have any notion of an idealized cabinet. For example, Clinton Rossiter, in The American
Presidency, writes:
The Cabinet has been a problem for at least a generation....Only tough custom and past glory have kept it from sliding noiselessly into oblivion. It is no longer a body upon which the President can rely for sage advice on great issues of state; it is not even, in its formal composition, a gathering of his most important and intimate associates. It is at best a relic of a simple past when department heads were thought to be men of broad interests and held in their own hands the whole power of administration. And Rossiter was not optimistic about the use of the cabinet in the future, commenting that the "President needs conciliar advice, in national as in international affairs; he needs agencies to coordinate executive policy, in the government at large as in the White House. Yet it is clear that the Cabinet cannot serve these two high purposes as well as other groups and agencies that exist already or could be set up without too much difficulty."2^
While political scientists have, especially in recent years, accurately described the cabinet as less than a set of collegial advisors to the President, these same writers have continued to write that public expectations, as well as expectations by the press, secretaries, and the President, have led to disappointment when the 89
cabinet has not served as a set of collegial advisors. Perhaps the best
example of this dual presentation is that by Emmette S. Redford et al in
their introductory textbook on American Government, written in the late
1960*s. The cabinet
is not a body whose members feel a strong collective responsibility and a mutual obligation and is at best of limited usefulness to the President as a source of advice; yet Presidents have, with varying degrees of regularity, retained the Cabinet meeting as part of their busy operations. The Cabinet is thus less than one’s preconceptions might suggest and more than its disillusioned critics would grant. Its persistence is a reflection of certain needs of the Presidency itself, while its limitations derive from the considerations affecting the appointment of its members and from their status as departmental executives.
In his classic work, The President’s Cabinet, Richard F. Fenno
tries to emphasize the contradictory requirements placed on cabinet
appointees in terms of a cabinet norm. Fenno writes,
Though shadowy in formulation, the frequent articulation of an ideal testifies to its existence and to the ethical supervision which it exercises over participant and observer alike. The norm has two components. First, Cabinet members as individuals should possess certain ideal qualities in order to do their particular jobs well. This involves an idea of a Cabinet of individuals equipped with political and/or administrative talents for their specific jobs....Secondly, the Cabinet should be able to work together to achieve teamwork....the ability and the willingness...of the Cabinet as a group to produce a co-operative organizational product. The ideal Cabinet, then, is made up of men who are eminently fitted to perform special tasks, yet these individuals must cohere as a unit if the name Cabinet is to have more than honorific significance.
It would appear as if little has changed in the past 27 years in that Presidents, the press, and even cabinet secretaries as a body themselves, have perpetuated the myth of an ideal cabinet, consisting of a set of collegial advisors to the President that the President will 90
convene on a regular basis so as to gather a collective wisdom
concerning the direction of his administration. Although this norm
makes less sense when the actual operation of the cabinet is examined,
the ideal persists. Even Fenno did not suggest that the cabinet with a
collective role was wrong. In looking at the strengths and weaknesses
of the cabinet, Fenno writes,
It is weakest in performing the function of interdepartmental coordination and in making direct contributions to decisions through a well-informed, well-organized discussion of policy alternatives. It is most useful as a presidential adviser, in the sense of a political sounding board equipped to provide clues as to likely public or group reactions, and as a forum in whicb_ some overall administrative coherence can be secured.
This idealized cabinet myth can set the grounds for the ultimate
dissatisfaction, or at best, frustration— both on the part of the
secretary and the President. J. Edward Day, Postmaster General to
President Kennedy, in an extremely witty and insightful autobiography, describes his days as Postmaster General. In reading his description
of the role of the cabinet in the Kennedy administration, I sense that however much he had gained a realistic perspective of the role of the
cabinet, the longings for a "cabinet government," and a persisting
belief that "cabinet government" could work, still prevailed. Day writes, "Members of the public, to the extent they think about it at all, think of the cabinet as meeting often and deliberating with the
President on the whole range of government problems, domestic and
international. They may even have a vague idea that votes are taken on
the various issues although some will recall the story about Lincoln's 91
decision which was taken contrary to the unanimous vote of his cabinet:
’Seven noes, one aye— the ayes have it.’" ^ Day goes on to describe the infrequency of cabinet meetings as well as their briefness (e.g., "the most highly publicized— at the time of the Cuban missile crisis— lasted qll but ten minutes.Yet, one senses an optimism that, yes, the cabinet and meetings of that body could be productive. Recalling the first meeting of the cabinet shortly after Kennedy's inauguration, Day notes that meeting lasted for 2 hours and found each secretary discussing the problems and issues they were facing. Yet it took 2 1/2 years before such a repeat performance was allowed. Day speculates as to the reasons for the disuse of the cabinet as an advisory body:
Why this dearth of dialogue? Certainly a major factor was that the men President Kennedy chose for his cabinet did not fall easily and naturally into line with his ’one man band’ approach to running the Government. Three of them— Luther Hodges, Orville Freeman and Abraham Ribicoff— had been successful and forceful Governors of states. In addition, Ribicoff had served in Congress, as had Stewart Udall. Arthur Goldberg had for many years been a big name on the labor scene and in Washington... None of us was a cigar-store Indian. Yet President Kennedy had never had the experience of being an executive among lesser but by no means subservient executives; he had been served by a fanatically devoted band of men of his own creation. His cabinet was a different run of shad. Each member was independent and quick to express his views, perhaps too much so for the President's taste. At any rate, he soon began to exhibit restlessness and impatience during cabinet meetings, which thereafter diminished in frequency....Still, I believe, the President planned to have more frequent cabinet meetings. 5
And, it appears as if Day, deep inside, still thought the cabinet meeting could be useful.
The atmosphere at cabinet meetings should have been right for free-and-easy, frank discussion. At the outset it had been only natural to assume that such discussion would be 92
encouraged. In contrast to the Eisenhower cabinet— at which the sheer number of staff members present hampered discussion— under President Kennedy there were usually only five persons in the room besides the President himself, his ten cabinet members, the Vice President, and Adlai Stevenson on the few occasions when he could attend. The setting may have been right, but after the first two or three meetings one had the distinct impression that the President felt that decisions on major matters were not made— or even influenced— at cabinet sessions, and that discussion there was a waste of time.
Day was not the only cabinet member to express interest in the idea of the cabinet as a source of overall advisors. Orville Freeman, when asked by an oral historian for the Kennedy Library if he expected "the meeting of the cabinet to actually provide a consensus on policy?" replied:
No, no. I think these were pretty much perfunctory. I can't remember very many cabinet meetings that amounted to very much. I think most of the cabinet felt that the cabinet was not really used as an influential policy group. This, so far, is pretty much the case with President Johnson as well. I think there is merit in this. As a governor I started out having kind of cabinet meetings, so to speak, of administrative heads in the state government. I found that it got to be a very time-consuming kind of thing with a lot of busy people listening to a lot of minutiae from someone else that they really weren't concerned with. On the other hand, I think both presidents miss a bet when they come down to policy questions by not putting a policy question to the cabinet and getting an expression. I don't think either one wants or should particularly seek a consensus that would be mandatory like the British system where they have to get it pretty much. I think it is quite clear both are strong men and strong leaders, and they are not going to fail to move because a majority of the cabinet might not agree. The cabinet really collectively very seldom— perhaps once or twice— sat down and bumped heads on an issue where you would have opportunity to probe a question....In terms of overall policy, what should the budget be, what is the judgment to balance in terms of spending, services, effective national economy versus the debt, and the level of spending as political issues, how do we balance these, this kind of issue, perhaps some trade question, some others I might name where I think he could have 93
profited from using the cabinet. But neither president has done so. Cabinet meetings, I think, are just put on as often as they can put them on so there won't be criticism and the cabinet won't be ridiculed for not doing what in the public eye they are supposed to do. I certainly think weekly cabinet meetings would be a waste of time, but I do think cabinet meetings on broad-ranging policy issues would be useful....
The analysis that follows is presented in the hopes of moving towards a better understanding of the role envisioned by a cabinet secretary and respective President, and the resulting harmony or dissonance in the ensuing relationship. This analysis will focus on the
Secretary's perspective. In Chapter 4 I will examine the secretary's perception of department goals and objectives. Any confusion over role perception and department goal orientation will be dealt with more extensively in Chapter 4, but briefly, role perception reflects the secretary's behavioral orientation to this post, and department goal orientation reflects objectives for the department which need not relate to a particular role orientation. METHODOLOGY
The analysis is based on a modified content analytic process.
Oral histories, administrative histories of the Johnson administration,
Senate confirmation hearings, and interviews appearing in The New York
Times served as the main sources of data for this study. Information obtained from these sources was supplemented by materials found in the presidential libraries, as well as autobiographies, and other sources from which the secretary’s perspective could be gleaned.
A coding frame analogous to that used by survey researchers to code open-ended questions was designed in order to categorize statements made reflecting goals and role perceptions. I realize the problems in using multiple data sources associated with consistency of data. An alternative would be to interview each secretary of this study and ask what their goals were, as well as what they viewed their role as secretary to be. However, the focus of my study is on the initial perceptions of the secretary, at the start of their tenure in office.
And interviews conducted 15 to 30 years after the individual has left office would also, in all likelihood, lead to an inconsistency in reporting or recalling of this information. In addition, I have found agreement among both goals and perceived roles when multiple sources of information were available for an individual secretary. That is, 95
statements made during the course of an interview with a New York Times
reporter or an oral history interviewer, or during a Senate confirmation
hearing, are all similar in content. As a result, I feel reasonably
confident in using this approach as a valid and reliable means to glean
information that would otherwise not be obtained except via a costly
interviewing process. (And this would assume that all of these
individuals were still alive and in good health, which is not the
case.)
I am aware of the complications of using public statements as a
determination of role perception— are these true representations of
thought? But I am interested in role perceptions at the start of tenure
rather than after the fact, and need initial perspectives, and for an
historical study these can only be gleaned from public statements or
private communications that have now become public. I have found role
perception agreement, for example, when looking at historical
recollection in comparison with actions during the course of a term of
office. Similarly, agreement is found when comparing oral histories with initial statements as will be demonstrated in looking at several examples in the next section. To demonstrate what types of statements would result in the various categorizations of role perceptions, I will go through each of the role perceptions identified in Table 8 and provide illustrations of the categorization scheme.
For each secretary I began with the Senate confirmation hearing
(except in the case of the Truman administration where published 96
hearings were unavailable), and used oral histories, published interviews, and materials that were available in the presidential libraries to reinforce what was stated in the hearing. I also read autobiographies of the secretaries and used information available if the secretary discussed their roles and goals as secretary in that material. As Fenno writes in justifying his use of documentary materials for his study of the cabinet, "The precise relationship between presidential personality and Cabinet activity is impossible to gauge, especially given the memoir, manuscript, public, and secondary materials available for this study. The diffused, refractory, and uneven nature of the sources make an elusive subject even more OQ slippery.7 Yet, "One can, however, indicate what seem to be the relevant areas of presidential behavior and suggest their likely effect 40 on the Cabinet.” Similarly, I am trying to use the data available in as systematic a fashion as possible to begin to suggest identifiable patterns and relationships.
The Categorization Scheme
I found that role perceptions of cabinet members fell into a dozen broad categories. The seven most common roles are shown in Table 8. 97
Table 8: Role Perceptions of Cabinet Members, 1945 to 1969
Role Perception
Policy-making 26$
Efficiency and Effectiveness in Administering Department 31$
Follow Laws/Constitution 22$
Serve President 44$
Serve Nation 28$
Work with Congress 60$
Serve Clientele Needs 24$
N = 68
Additional roles identified by several Cabinet appointees, but not included in Table 8 include: serving the Department’s needs; working with other Departments; implementing programs; deferring to Congress; campaigning and protecting the President's interests; and helping states to deal with their problems. Since only a few individuals stated these goals they have been omitted from Table 8.
To illustrate what types of statements would result in the various categorizations, in the remainder of this methodology section I will go through each of the seven role perceptions identified in Table 8 and provide illustrations of how statements or writings of respective secretaries were coded into these categories. In several cases I will demonstrate how a variety of different sources would lead to the same 98
conclusion— e.g., confirmation hearings, interviews, and even autobiographies when the emphasis was on cabinet work.
Policy-making
Policy-making as a role perception is meant to include the formulation of policy statements and making of policy, both department specifc as well as broadly speaking. Remarks included in this category are broad pronouncements concerning the secretary's intention to have a say in policy making. The implementation of policies formulated by others, including the President, is not included in this category. As an example, during Stewart L. Udall's confirmation hearing for the post of Secretary of the Interior, a discussion ensued as to the role of those throughout the Department, and Udall distinguished between line positions and policy-making positions. In response to a question about the controversial appointment of Floyd E. Dominy as Commissioner of
Reclamation, Udall responded, "In my view, this is a line office, really, and not a policymaking office and there are times when either by default or purpose, these people are made into policy officers because someone else does not want to take the rap for something, but I regard this as a largely line office. It may mean extra burdens, but I intend to make the policy and consult with my associates within the
111 Department when necessary on it." 99
Efficiency and Effectiveness In Administering Department
A classic counter theme to policy is management expertise. Table 8
shows this was about as common as policy as a role perception for the
secretaries of this era. As an example of a management role, during J.
Edward Day’s confirmation hearing for the post of Postmaster General he
identified his primary concern as working to reduce the deficit in the
Post Office Department and working on saving money in the area of li? management. The same emphasis on department management and increased efficiency is re-stated throughout Day's autobiography. Conversion to
the zipcode system and the use of vertical conveyors are described as
tools introduced to increase postal efficiency. In addition, Day wrote
that:
promotions based on the spoils system exacted a heavy toll in efficiency and morale, and consequently in the rising cost of processing mail. Politically sponsored supervisors sometimes felt they enjoyed a certain immunity from disciplinary measures and performed accordingly. As supervision lagged, the productivity of clerks and carriers dropped, too. As a few persons with the appropriate political support were elevated to high-paying positions, the morale of hundreds and thousands, without that support, sank. It was my strong belief that good supervision and good employee morale were the greatest needs of the Post Office Department. Accordingly, promotions to supervisory and technical jobs were put on a merit basis...to the everlasting horror of those who preferred to dispense jobs like plums to the politically deserving. ^ 100
Follow Laws/Constitution
Rather than policy formulation or management, a secretary can just choose to enforce the laws. As an example, Arthur J. Goldberg, in his confirmation hearing for the post of Secretary of Labor, stated his intent to administer and enforce various laws. The role of the
Secretary of Labor as envisioned by Goldberg at the start of his tenure was described as follows:
The Congress of the United States has given to the Secretary of Labor the responsibility of administration and enforcement of various laws. These include not only the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Walsh-Healey Act, the Davis-Bacon Act, and others, but also the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. I wish to make perfectly clear that if I am confirmed as Secretary of Labor I shall do everything in my power to enforce these laws vigorously, fairly, and without, fear or favor, and in the spirit of humanity and commonsense which I believe should characterize all law enforcement.
Advise/Serve President
The second most prevalent role orientation found was that of
Presidential advisor. As an example, throughout the confirmation hearing of John Foster Dulles for the post of Secretary of State he stresses the advising role he expects to have. For example, Dulles states
Now of course you understand that as a member of the Cabinet and as Secretary of State, I will not make independent 101
policies for the Executive. The principal job of the Secretary of State is to advise the President, and it is he who makes the final decisions about foreign policy, and whatever my own individual views in that respect would be, I would as the part of good teamwork, hope to be able to work and expect to be able to work in the closest cooperation with General Eisenhower in those respects.
Later, in discussing the role of ambassadors, Dulles identifies the differing roles envisioned for State Department personnel.
This business of having four or five ambassadors in Paris is all wrong in my opinion. It confuses the French government. They don’t know whom to deal with. Various people get in conflict with each other. There is no clear line of authority. I think that situation must be cleaned up, but I hope it can be cleaned up without throwing upon the Secretary of State and his Under Secretaries such executive and operating responsibilities that they are not able to do their first job, that of advising the President about foreign policy. 6
Luther Hodges, in an oral history interview conducted by the John
F. Kennedy Presidential Library in 1964, during the course of his term of office as Secretary of Commerce, was asked what he perceived the role of the Department of Commerce to be. Hodges replied,"The Department of
Commerce has a very definite role to play. It is supposed to advise the
President on the economy of the nation and to do whatever it can to 47 assist the economy of the nation.” Serve Nation/Public
Serving the public’s needs is an attractive counter theme to
serving as Presidential advisor. This role is exemplified when, in his appearance before the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, James
P. Mitchell gave a statement as to his role as Secretary: "I conceive my job to be that of a public servant, devoted to the mission which is set out by Congress for the Department of Labor which is that of li 8 developing the welfare of the wage earners of the United States....”
Archivists in the Eisenhower Library, who have gone through the papers of Mitchell that have been given to the library affirm the broadly conceived role that Mitchell espoused prior to his confirmation to the post: "Secretary Mitchell approached his job with the idea that the
Labor Department should serve the public in general— that is, everyone who worked and not just organized labor....At the center of Mitchell's approach to solving labor-management differences was a call for understanding, common sense, and enlightened self-interest. He asked business to curtail inflationary profit-taking and labor to moderate 2i q wage demands.” 103
Work with Congress
The most common role orientation found was working with Congress.
For example, in the Oral History conducted for the Kennedy Library,
Luther Hodges describes his relationship with Congress:
...we had our own Congressional Relations people from day to day checking on this or that bill. Where there was a particularly important thing, such as the Trade Expansion Act, or the Travel Act, or ARA, or Accelerated Public Works, or big things that came into the Department, or were part of the total Administration, many times I made personal contact either by telephone or otherwise. I preferred to go and see the people. If I had time, there was nothing I enjoyed as much as going to the Congressman’s office or the Senator’s office. The Senate being smaller, I had a chance to know a greater number of them. I knew many of them by their first name and had a fine relationship with them. I think because I was sort of the old man of the Cabinet, and had been a Governor, and had always spoken out, and had a basic conservative tinge from the standpoint of business, I got along with them very well. Many times the President would ask, either directly or through one of his aides, if I would get hold of so and so and talk to them....One of the basic reasons we had a good relationship with Congress is that we did not take advantage of our relationships. We were careful not to overdo it. We were called in infrequently and whenever we could, we would drop by. We never would say I want you to vote for this, or I expect you to vote for it. W e ’d simply say, "I’d like to come and explain my point-of-view on this thing and see if you have any questions about it; naturally we would like to have your help and judgment, if the situation of your district or state would allow you to do it." We never misled them or twisted any arms. So, we always had a good relationship with them.
Throughout his confirmation hearing to the post of Secretary of
Agriculture, Orville L. Freeman emphasized his plans to work with
Congress in a number of ways. For example, he would seek out ideas and recommendations from members of Congress. He would consult with members of Congress, and, in particular, seek out advice from the Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry in the Senate as well as other relevant committees in the Senate and House. In addition, he would work to Cl implement the legislation that Congress did pass. Similarly, in
Freeman’s Oral History with the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, he described his efforts to sell Kennedy’s programs to Congress in his first year. Freeman took advantage of access to the media in his first year, ”which I knew would not be available consistently because agriculture isn’t of that much burning interest to the great majority of our people. So I jumped at every opportunity the first year to do that.
Plus I spent as much time on the Hill as I did in my office trying to c? develop good working relationships with the members of the committee.”
This working relationship with Congress persisted with the change of administrations. Freeman worked closely with Larry O’Brien and his
White House Staff in trying to woo Congress. Freeman worked to get a bill out of Committee, while Larry O'Brien and his staff would work on the Rules Committee and the Speaker to win passage of a measure.
Another Kennedy appointee with strong sentiments as to working with
Congress is that of C. Douglas Dillon. In his confirmation hearing for the post of Secretary of the Treasury, Dillon repeatedly stated his intent to let Congress decide policy and Treasury to follow and carry 521 out congressional intent. Dillon stated it was the role of Congress
EC to decide tax rates. J In deciding expenditures and means by which to raise revenues, Dillon stated that ”We do have a responsibility for 105
making recommendations, but Congress disposes of those recommendations, 56 and then our job is to handle the management of the debt accordingly."
Later in the hearing, Dillon again stated that "I think one area
certainly that should be studied is the area of incentives through the
tax system to more rapid modernization of plant, and that certainly would be a prerogative of the Treasury to suggest to the Congress and 57 for the Congress to act on..."
Serve Clientele Needs
The final role to be discussed here is serving clientele needs.
As a final example, in his confirmation hearing for the post of
Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson clearly indicated his intent to serve the interests of farmers. Benson stated his interest in those close to the farm.
I do not suppose there is any other group that knows so well that "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." I have always been proud to be associated with them, to serve them, and I feel very much indebted to them for what they have done for me. I am very happy over the prospect of possibly helping to -serve further this important segment of our population.
Benson also stated, in response to a question asking his interests, that the national welfare is of primary concern, but "closely related to that is the welfare of the farmers. Having been one of them, having been 106
closely associated with them, I think you can count on me being aggressive and helping them."^ Benson also promised to appoint farmers to advising positions. In reading Benson's autobiography, evidence is found to support the stated interest in serving farmers and using them in an advising capacity. In December of 1952, President-elect
Eisenhower created an Agricultural Advisory Commission, which Benson used throughout his term. After several initial appointments by
Eisenhower to the Commission the remainder of the appointments were made by Benson. Benson appointed a broad spectrum of farm-related interests to the Commission, including bankers, professors, and processors (since agriculture had many different areas) but insisted on a fair size contingent of farmers on the Commission. As Benson writes, the establishment of the Commission "was a prompt beginning in fulfillment of the General's campaign pledge to appoint a bipartisan commission to advise the Secretary of Agriculture on farm policy and to review from time to time policy, accomplishments, and needs. Later this group was made formal as a permanent committee with a rotating membership of eighteen, at least twelve of whom were always full-time farmers."^® ROLE PERCEPTION BY ADMINISTRATION
A logical starting point in the examination of the role perception of the President's cabinet is to look at the role envisioned by secretaries in each of the respective administrations. An examination of the data suggests a number of similarities, as well as differences, in the role perceptions envisioned by the cabinet secretaries of the
Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Administrations (see Table 9). 108
Table 9: Role Perception by Administration
Role Perception Truman Eisenhower Kennedy Johnson
Policy-making 19% 35% "15% 36%
Efficiency and
Effectiveness in
Administering Dept 19% 20% 31% 64%
Follow Laws/Constitu
tion 5% 25% 54% 14%
Serve President 43% 35% 69% 36%
Serve Nation/Public 19% 35% 46% 14%
Work With Congress 62% 60% 69% 50%
Serve Clientele Needs 33% 20% 7% 28.5%
N = 21 20 13 14
As a way of exploring the data, and the President’s relationship with his cabinet, it seems useful to begin by examining one case— the
Johnson Cabinet. The perceived roles of the secretaries of the Johnson cabinet suggest several explanations for some of the frustrations both
Johnson and his cabinet are generally believed to have experienced.
Halberstam, among others, has written of the strong Johnson desire to compare and contrast his administration with that of the Kennedy's.
For example, in discussing Johnson's reactions to Joe Alsop's columns in 109
196*1 urging Johnson to take stronger actions in Vietnam, Halberstam described the question raised in his mind— "Did...(he)have as much C A manhood as Jack Kennedy?" Among the papers I have examined on the cabinet I found this comparing and contrasting to be the case in several instances. At one point in time the number of cabinet meetings held by each President in a comparable time period was counted at President
Johnson’s request. Similarly, counts were also made for the number of press conferences held by each (see Table 10). 110
Table 10: Comparisons of the Johnson and Kennedy Administrations Made by President Johnson
Cabinet Meetings
Kennedy Johnson
1st year 13 11
2nd year 10 13
3rd year 8 11
TOTAL 31 35
(Source: CF FG 100/MC R. E. Kintner, Memo, for Mrs. Yates, 8-30-66, LBJ Presidential Library)
Press Conferences: "Regular On-the-Record Press Conferences"
Kennedy: 64 Press Conferences Johnson: 68 Press Conferences
(1st 977 days— To September 25, (1st 977 days—
1963) July 25, 1966)
Source: CF FG 100/MC Memo, Kintner for Bill Moyers, 7-22-66, attached "A Comparison of the Press Conferences of President Johnson and President Kennedy" 111
Efforts to "match" or "better" the Kennedy Administration are also evident in Johnson's attempts to surround himself with Ph.D's, in order to equal the intellectual climate surrounding the Kennedy presidency.
Johnson's appointments of Gardner, Weaver, and Wood, plus John
Gronouski’s presence in the cabinet, all reflected the inclusion of academics in "Johnson's" cabinet. In an information sheet giving a biographical sketch of Gronouski released in July of 1964, the introduction starts, "Postmaster General John Austin Gronouski, who took office September 30, 1963, is the only known member of a President's cabinet ever to hold an earned Ph.D."
But with this emphasis on individuals possessing the credentials needed to intellectually match the Kennedy appointees, paradoxically the other side of the Kennedy appointments— that is, their loyalty to the
President and desire to serve the President's needs— was overlooked by
Johnson. (In contrast to the overall tone of the confirmation hearings for Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson, there is a noticeable deference to the wishes and priorities of President Kennedy by members of his cabinet. For example, in response to questions concerning enactment of the Democratic Party Platform, Arthur Goldberg responds, "I think when it comes to legislative recommendations to the Congress, I am a member of an administration. President-elect Kennedy is the leader of that administration. I will, of course, as one of his advisors, hope to give him the benefit of my views, and I'll do so in discharge of my responsibilities."^^ Similarly, Abraham Ribicoff, in answering a 112
question asking what he has in mind in order to achieve excellence in
schools, replies, "I have spent much thought on it, and I think it is my
duty as a secretary-designate not to make a detailed comment until the 64 President-elect adopts his programs and makes his decisions." )
Surprisingly, only 36% of the Johnson appointees indicated serving
the President as a perceived role. It is thus less surprising that
Johnson viewed his cabinet in "us" against "them" terms, or himself as 65 "the loneliest man in the world." Even if the Vietnam War had not escalated as public sentiment turned against the war, it would appear that loyalty and service to the President's needs and desires would not have a priority among the cabinet, and hence their support might have been lacking regardless of the President's foreign policy decisions.
With nearly 2/3 of Johnson’s cabinet viewing effective, and efficient management of their respective departments as a major role, unlike the secretaries of the Kennedy or Eisenhower administrations, a slightly different twist suggests itself. Johnson sought out the best individuals to run the departments— thus running the departments was a primary responsibility for these individuals. And with the Great
Society programs successfully enacted, it was natural for these individuals to assume a role as implementers of the programs.
However, the traditional emphasis given to studies of the Johnson administration is the labyrinthine structure designed to effectively lobby and deal with Congress. And there is plenty of evidence to support this. Typifying the President's emphasis on seeking and 113
fostering congressional support of his legislative programs along with the selling of that legislative program to the public is Robert
Kintner's description of a cabinet meeting held a month prior to the
1966 congressional elections. The cabinet meeting began without Johnson there to open the meeting. Larry O'Brien, Postmaster General, followed notes from Johnson and "led a discussion of priority legislation and the remaining days of the present session of Congress." After Johnson joined the meeting, following a discussion centering primarily around the Demonstration City bill, the meeting concluded with "an impromptu talk" by the President, "on the great accomplishments that have been made in the second session of the Eighty-Ninth Congress and urged that the Administration's successful record be published.
Even in non-election years cabinet members were responsible for status reports on legislation before Congress falling under their 6*7 respective jurisdictions.
In addition, rather than allow a haphazard system of contacts between Departments and Congress to develop, the President formalized reporting procedures. By February of 1967, cabinet members were required to submit "to the President every two weeks important and informative results of their liaison with Members of Congress on
Administration policies and proposed legislation under their supervision." And cabinet secretaries were personally expected to take a fift part in the preparation of these reports. Johnson was not content with merely knowing the effectiveness of
Congressional liaison activities. Additionally, cabinet meetings
included reports discussing the method of liaison with Congress that cabinet secretaries and their staff proposed to use in order to give 6Q support to a particular legislative measure. J As part of his duties,
Larry O'Brien was expected to notify cabinet members of their responsibilities in reporting on specific legislation planned for discussion at upcoming meetings.
However, in looking at the role perceptions of the Johnson administration in contrast to that of the Truman, Eisenhower, and especially the Kennedy administrations, it appears that "working with
Congress" in and of itself is less important at least from the secretary's perspective. While this does rank second among the role perceptions mentioned by Johnson cabinet members, I would have expected
it to rank first among secretaries in an administration which emphasized strong congressional relations. A subgovernment explanation may be appropriate in understanding this difference. Within a subgovernment there are close department ties with Congress in the program implementation stage as well as the formulation period. What with most of Johnson's appointments made after the successful 88th Congress and the enactment of much of the Great Society legislation, the job envisioned by appointees was to see that these programs were successfully carried out, hence their role was perceived as that of administering the Department. 115
Thus, although the Johnson administration is often viewed in terms of the expansion of the government, and the emphasis is given to the push for legislative support in Congress, the other side of the coin is the need to administer and deal effectively with this huge growth. With administrative management having so pronounced a role among his cabinet,
Johnson was enabled to continue to seek additional program support.
These findings suggest that the Johnson administration not solely be viewed in terms of the legislative pushes from the White House, but also with the subgovernment idea of close ties between the bureaucracy and
Congress, since the cabinet secretaries were obviously dealing with
Congress (or had a legislative liaison unit in their department specifically assigned that task). Yet the role perception of the cabinet members is less that of working with Congress, than of administering their departments.
The Johnson cabinet’s inbred sense of working with Congress as a normal function in heading the Department, rather than as the separate role envisioned by the Kennedy cabinet, perhaps is best explained in looking at the governmental background of the respective appointees. As stated in Chapter 2, in looking at Johnson's appointments, 73^ had been recruited from the federal sector. Therefore, they were bringing to the post a working knowledge of the federal government. This is in contrast to the cabinet appointments of the Kennedy administration, which finds but 23% of the appointments drawn from those currently employed in the federal sector. 116
However, the same argument cannot be made for the Truman appointees. Although a similarly high number of the Truman secretaries were recruited from the federal government (67$), more do express their interest in working with Congress (62$). Also, for the Truman appointees, serving the President is the second most frequently identified role, whereas for the Johnson appointees it is tied for third. But there are several problems in comparing the Truman administration with the Johnson administration. One is the time period— Truman's administration embraces two wars, with a period of de-mobilization in between, a time of bipartisan foreign policy, and the well-established programs of the New Deal, but not the establishment of new cabinet Departments to deal with government's expanded role. The
"outer cabinet" as it existed in the 1940's would have been of an entirely different complexion, without the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare, or the Departments of Housing. and Urban
Development and Transportation. If there are differences in role perception between the inner cabinet and the outer cabinet and the outer cabinet has undergone changes, then it would be an unfair comparison to be looking at the Truman and Johnson cabinets as similar in nature.
However, it is interesting to note the similarities between the
Eisenhower and Johnson cabinets. The data suggest that the Eisenhower and Johnson secretaries did have some definite ideas as to the role they would be playing, or had least expressed their sentiments as to the anticipated role they planned to have. In comparison to Kennedy's cabinet members, the Johnson and Eisenhower secretaries seem more 117
interested in policy-making (and as noted above, the Johnson secretaries seem committed to department management), and less hesitant to blindly adopt a "devoted servant" mentality. I will shortly examine what I have labeled a naive mentality in looking at midterm versus initial cabinet 70 appointments. For now I would suggest that the Kennedy cabinet, unlike the Johnson and Eisenhower cabinets, had a more generalized concept of their role. Statements made by the secretaries followed the lines of "serving the President," "supporting the President's positions," "serving the Nation," or "upholding the Constitution."
However, this could bea function of the nature of the appointments made— most of Kennedy's cabinet stayed throughout his tenure, resulting in few midterm appointments. Johnson and Eisenhower had a greater number of changes in cabinet members throughout their respective administrations.
ROLE PERCEPTION BY DEPARTMENT
An appropriate method of categorization is to examine the roles envisioned by secretaries in each of the respective Departments. An examination of the data suggests a number of interesting aspects of the cabinet that should be explored and will be examined in the remainder of this chapter, (see Table 11). TABLE 11 : ROLE PERCEPTION BY DEPARTMENTS
Role Perception State Treasury Defense Attorney Postmaster Interior General General
Policy 17%(1 of 6) 14%(1 of 7) 33%(3 of 9) 12.5%(1 of 8) 14% (1 of 7) 20%(1 of 5)
Efficiency and Effective 17%(1 of 6) 14% (1 of 7) 44% (4 of 9) 0 71% (5 of 7) 0 ness in Administering Dept
Follow Laws/Constitution 0 14% (1 of 7) 22% (2 of 9) 62.5%(5 of 8) 14% (1 of 7) 40% (2 of 5)
Serve President 83%(5 of 6) 43% (3 of 7) 33%(3 of 9) 37.5%(3 of 8) 14% (1 of 7) 60% (3 of 5)
Serve Nation/Public 17%(1 of 6) 14% (1 of 7) 33% (3 of 9) 25.0%(2 of 8) 28.5%(2 of 7) 20% (1 of 5)
Work With Congress 100%(6 of 6) 86% (6 of 7) 67% (6 of 9) 62.5%(5 of 8) 57% (4 of 7) 40% (2 of 5)
Serve Clientele Needs 0 0 01 0 0 40% (2 of 5)
Role Perception Agriculture Commerce Labor HEW HUD Transportation
Policy 25% (1 of 4) 50.0%(4 of 8) 0 57% (4 of 7) 0 100%(1 of 1)
Efficiency and Effective 25% (1 of 4) 37.5% (3 of 8) 17% (1 of 6) 43%(3 of 7) 100%(1 of 1) 100%(1 of 1) ness in Administering Dept
Follow Laws/Constitution 25% (1 of 4) 0 33% (2 of 6) 14%(1 of 7) 0 0
Serve President 75% (3 of 4) 25.0%(2 of 8) 50% (3 of 6) 57% {4 of 7) 0 100%(1 of 1)
Serve Nation/Public 75% (3 of 4) 12.5%(1 of 8) 50% (3 of 6) 28.5%(2 of 7) 0 0
Work With Congress 50% (2 of 4) 62.5%(5 of 8) 50% (3 of 6) 43% {3 of 7) 0 0
Serve Clientele Needs 75% (3 of 4) 50.0%(4 of 8) 67% (4 of 6) 28.5%(2 of 7) 0 100% (1 of 1)
(Up to 4 roles were coded for each secretary, hence frequencies are greater than 100%) 119
What strikes me is the diversity of roles envisioned by these members both within a Department and across Departments. This diversity begins to suggest why the cabinet is not the most easily observed and summed up of bodies. The data do, however, support some commonly held assumptions concerning cabinet secretaries and provide some explanation for these assumptions.
In looking at the role perceptions of the Secretaries of State it becomes apparent why they are not comfortable in the State Department and why the career Foreign Service likewise may be uncomfortable with the Secretary. During the time frame of this study, 83$ (5 of 6) of the
Secretaries expressed a desire to serve the President while all 6 indicated a willingness to work with Congress. If the Secretary’s shaping of foreign policy is to be done with the White House and
Congress, what role is left for the State Department per se? None of the secretaries involved the department in much of a foreign policy role. Of all the secretaries, the Secretary of State seems most suited for the broad advising role usually expected of a cabinet member.
This becomes even clearer if another role is considered— that of policy-making. Only one of the Secretaries of State expressed explicit policy-making as a role. Rather than propose specific policies at the outset, and then lobby on their behalf, the primary role as stated throughout interviews and Senate hearings was that of serving the interests of the President, and supporting foreign policy as directed by the President, along with an interest in keeping Members of Congress 120
informed of current foreign policy, soliciting their counsel as issues arise, and subsequently informing the President of Congressional sentiment.
The Secretary of Commerce is a surprising purveyor of policy-making statements. 4 of 8 Secretaries indicated their role as including the enunciation of and garnering of support for specific policy recommendations. The only other Departments with similar percentages are those of Transportation (this newly created position was headed by but one individual— Alan S. Boyd— during the course of this study) and
HEW. As I will discuss in a later section, the establishment of HEW in
1953 and Transportation in 1967 (as well as HUD in 1966) as new
Departments would, I suggest, lead to altered role perceptions from those secretaries heading Departments well established in the Executive
Branch. As for the Secretary of Commerce, this policy role does appear to set this post apart from the rest of the outer cabinet positions, since at most one individual in each of the other departments of the outer cabinet adopted this inital role perspective (except as noted above).
It could well be that the functional responsibilities of the
Secretary of Commerce lead to this policy-making role. And the policy concerns of Commerce may not be important enough to be of concern to the
President, thus leaving the Secretary with a strong role perception in the policy arena. In reading an oral history interview of Luther
Hodges, Secretary of Commerce in the Kennedy Administration, some 121
support is found for this position. For instance, upon assuming the post of Secretary of Commerce, Hodges met with the Budget Director who suggested not bothering the many independent agencies in the Department
(e.g., Weather Bureau, Patent Office) since they "are pretty well 71 established and they knew where they were going."' Hodges did not agree with this position and moved to gain control over a sprawling department. In addition, as Table 11 indicates, the Secretaries of
Commerce have not felt as strongly about serving the President. Perhaps
Hodges has best explained the reason for this position. The Secretary of Commerce should be an economics adviser to the President and does have research support in that area in the Department, yet the role of economics adviser had been lost to the Council of Economic Advisers to the President since the units in Commerce were functioning quite 72 autonomously during much of the time period of this study.' Thus, it appears that Secretaries of Commerce may have chosen to work in the areas that the President is less concerned about.
In looking at Table 11, it appears that of outer cabinet members only the Postmasters General join the Commerce Secretaries in this lack of interest in "serving the President." Perhaps these individuals do have the clearest concept of what their job is to be, and therefore do not have to resort to general statements that really give little indication of what the Secretary will actually be doing during the course of the Administration. As the Secretaries of Commerce seem confident in stating a policy-making role, with widespread awareness of 122
the need to work with Congress, the Postmasters General also seem to
have been aware that their Department is a business— and as such, their
role is to see that that business is run in the most efficient and
cost-effective manner possible. 71$ (5 of 7) of the Secretaries made
statements to that effect.
In looking at the backgrounds of the Postmasters General this
finding is not surprising, although it appears to run counter to the earlier practice of having a political Postmaster General who was
typically the national party chairman. During the period of this study, only two of seven Postmasters General had served as chairs of their national party committees— Robert Hannegan, who served under Truman, and
Arthur E. Summerfield, who served under Eisenhower. Although most of the seven had been active in party politics, three had strong backgrounds in business (Summerfield, J. Edward Day, William M. Watson); one was a Professor of Finance and Taxation (John Gronouski); and one had moved up through the ranks of the Post Office Department to serve as the first careerist in the post of Postmaster General (Jesse Donaldson).
Only two had careers dominated by politics— Hannegan and Larry O’Brien.
One further observation should be made apropos to the theoretical frameworks for the cabinet described in Chapters 1 and 2. It is interesting to note the absence of clientele concerns from the inner cabinet posts, and the inclusion of those concerns among the outer cabinet posts, except in the case of the Postmaster General. Other differences between the inner and outer cabinet departments will be 123
summarized later in this chapter.
As the introduction to this chapter has indicated, the difficult
task is to identify the commonalities as well as the differences found
in the President’s cabinet. Table 11, as bulky and cumbersome as it is,
does begin to suggest that identifiable patterns do exist and that
further exploration is warranted.
In looking at Table 11, one does become aware that there are but a
few cases in each Department. Strict tests of significance are meaningless in the context of this universe, but in terms of a cut-off point, a difference of 10 percentage points will be used as a guide for discussing the substantively important differences in the tables that follow.
Now that we have examined the differences between administrations and departments, once again the theoretical frameworks described in
Chapter 1 will be examined in a further attempt to determine their appropriateness in providing understanding of this body.
In looking at individual departments, the absence of clientele concerns among the secretaries of the inner cabinet departments was noted. This observation redirects our attention to the theoretical construct of the inner cabinet versus the outer cabinet identified in the early 1970's by Cronin, so we can evaluate the appropriateness of this theoretical framework in understanding the cabinet. 12H
THE INNER CABINET VS. THE OUTER CABINET
In looking at the distinctions between the inner cabinet and the outer cabinet, there are some differences, yet also some remarkable similarities. If the inner cabinet is viewed in terms of the more collegial set of advisors to the President as often described, one would expect to find "serving the President" in non-specific terms to predominate as a role perception. Yet that is not the case, (see Table
12) 125
Table 12: Role Perception— Inner Cabinet vs. the Outer Cabinet
Role Perception Inner■ Cabinet Outer Cabinet
Policy-making 21.0% (6 of 29) 31$ (12 of 39)
Efficiency and Effectiveness
in Administering Dept 21.0$ (6 of 29) 38$ (15 of 39)
Follow Laws/Constitution 27.5$ (8 of 29) 18$ ( 7 of 39)
Serve President 45.0$ (13 of 29) 44$ (17 of 39)
Serve Nation/Public 24.0$ ( 7 of 29) 31$ (12 of 39)
Work with Congress 76.0$ (22 of 29) 49$ (19 of 39)
Serve Clientele Needs 0 41$ (16 of 39)
Table 13: Role Perception— Initial vs., Midtermi Appointments
Role Perception Midterm jdppt Initial Appt»
Policy-making 29.0$ (11 of 38) 18.5$ ( 5 of 27)
Efficiency and Effectiveness
in Administering Dept 34.0$ (13 of 38) 18.5$ ( 5 of 27)
Follow Laws/Constitution 18.0$ ( 7 of 38) 30.0$ ( 8 of 27)
Serve President 42.0$ (16 of 38) 44.0$ (12 of 27)
Serve Nation/Public 29.0$ (11 of 38) 30.0$ ( 8 of 27)
Work with Congress 66.0$ (25 of 38) 59.0$ (16 of 27)
Serve Clientele Needs 31.5$ (12 of 38) 11.0$ ( 3 of 27)
•Hobby, Weaver, and Boyd, who served as initial heads of new
Departments have been omitted from this table. 126
In looking at Table 12, there appears to be no overall difference
between the inner cabinet and outer cabinet in terms of serving the
President, as might be expected due to the President’s turning to inner
cabinet secretaries for advice of a general nature. That might be a
reason to explain relatively short tenure of secretaries (approximately
2 1/2 years). If outer cabinet secretaries initially perceive the same role functions as inner cabinet secretaries, yet the President views
their roles as distinct (e.g., the outer cabinet secretaries as serving clientele groups) the ability of those secretaries to successfully perform roles they envision will be severely restricted, resulting in
frustration and disappointment in office. ^
One unexpected finding is the far greater role perception of
"working with Congress" on the part of the inner cabinet secretaries than expressed by outer cabinet secretaries. Again, in thinking in terms of subgovernments, intuitively I would have suspected the reverse to be the case, especially if one views outer cabinet secretaries as serving or representing clientele groups. The subgovernment literature notes the close workings of clientele groups, department heads, and 7I1 congressional committee members due to mutual needs. However, two reasons can be used to explain this finding. Returning to the earlier discussion of the Johnson cabinet, and the lessened emphasis on working with Congress in contrast to the emphasis on managing the Department, the argument suggested to explain that finding can also be used here.
If outer cabinet secretaries are more concerned with the day-to-day, as 127
well as long-term functionings of their departments (and 38$ of the outer cabinet secretaries so indicate vs. but 21$ of the inner cabinet secretaries), then an expected job function would be that of working with Congress and would be viewed as part of the department’s tasks and not as a separate task. In looking at prior governmental experience of the inner cabinet secretaries, one finds that 48$ had served as Deputy or Assistant Secretary in their respective Departments, whereas but
19.5$ of the outer cabinet secretaries had so similarly served. Since the Assistant Secretaries, to a large extent, serve as liaisons to
Congress in terms of providing testimony at 'hearings, responding to inquiries, or specifically being assigned the role of Congressional liaison, this finding is not so surprising.
As expected, none of the inner cabinet members viewed their role as that of serving interest group or clientele needs. This is in contrast to the outer cabinet departments, where H1$ of the secretaries expressed such a role perception.
Throughout the remainder of this chapter I will continue to examine this theoretical construct. 128
MIDTERM VERSUS INITIAL APPOINTMENTS—
THE "NAIVE1* VIEW OF THE CABINET
To return to an earlier discussion— that of the appointments of
Kennedy versus the appointments of Eisenhower and Johnson, a reference was made to the fact that differences in role perception could be a I factor of the nature of the appointment— that is, an initial appointment or appointment as a midterm replacement. In this section I will examine more closely the naive view that has been identified surrounding a
President’s cabinet and see if it is a phenomena more prevalent among initial appointments.
If one defines this naive view of the cabinet as one where the press, the President, and secretaries view the position of a cabinet secretary in idealized terms of "advising the President,” "serving the
Nation," "upholding laws," and so forth, it would appear that only a slight difference in role orientation is evident between a President’s initial cabinet appointments and subsequent appointments made in the course of an administration in the area of "following the laws/constitution" (see Table 13).
Perhaps the most interesting finding is the shift that takes place between Truman's initial appointments and all subsequent appointments in 129
this study. In an earlier paper in which results analyzing only the
Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson cabinets were presented, a strong case was made for a naive view of the cabinet among the initial cabinet appointees. That is, from an analysis of role perception it became apparent that more of the initial cabinet appointments were perceiving their jobs in non-specific terms such as "serving the President" or 75 "serving the nation" than was true for midterm appointments. However, when the Truman cabinet was added for this analysis the findings did not hold (see Table 13). There was little difference between initial and midterm appointments in the use of vague, non-specific terms in describing their role. I found it puzzling that .the Truman appointees would have made such a dramatic difference in the results. To test this possibility, I again isolated the Truman appointees from the other 3 cabinets and compared role perceptions of initial and midterm appointments (see Tables 14 and 15). This time the findings did confirm earlier results. A naive view did permeate the initial appointees subsequent to the Truman administration. As noted in Chapter 2, 66$ of midterm appointments, but only 26$ of initial appointments came from the federal sector. As for the Truman administration, the same percentage of midterm and initial appointments were drawn from the federal sector, which is not surprising, given the huge governmental structure created 76 to serve war and demobilization needs. Therefore, the Truman appointments would not have the naive perceptions differentiating initial from replacement secretaries as is true in the other three administrations. Table 14: Role Perception— Initial Appointments
Role Perception Truman All Others
Policy-making 17$ (1 of 6) 21$ ( 4 of 19)
Efficiency and Effective
ness in Administering
Dept. 0 26$ ( 5 of 19) OJ Follow Laws/Constitution 0 ( 8 of 19)
Serve President 33% (2 of 6) 53$ (10 of 19)
Serve Nation/Public 0 42$ ( 8 of 19)
Work with Congress 17$ (1 of 6) 68$ (13 of 19)
Serve Clientele Needs 33$ (2 of 6) 5$ ( 1 of 19)
Table 15: Role Perception— Midterm Appointments
Role Perception Truman All Others
Policy-making 20$ ( 3 of 15) 32$ ( 8 of 25)
Efficiency and Effective
ness in Administering
Dept. 27$ ( 4 of 15) 36$ ( 9 of 25)
Follow Laws/Constitution 7$ ( 1 of 15) 24$ ( 6 of 25)
Serve President 47$ ( 7 of 15) 36$ ( 9 of 25)
Serve Nation/Public 27$ ( 4 of 15) 28$ ( 7 of 25)
Work with Congress 67$ (10 of 15) 60$ (15 of 25)
Serve Clientele Needs 33$ ( 5 of 15) 28$ ( 7 of 25) 131
BALANCE
Intrigued by the apparent difference between midterm and initial appointments it seemed useful to take this analysis a bit further.
Combining the inner/outer framework with type of appointment (initial or midterm), led to some interesting observations (see Tables 16 and 17).
Table 16: Role Perception— Inner Cabinet by Type of Appointment
Role Perception Midterm Initial
Policy-making 28? ( 5 of 18) 9? (1 of 11)
Efficiency and Effectiveness
in Administering Dept. 17? ( 3 of 18) 27? (3 of 11
28? ( 5 of 18)Follow Laws/Constitution 28? ( 5 of 18)Follow 27? (3 of 11
Serve President 39? ( 7 of 18) 54.5? (6 of 11
Serve Nation/Public 17? ( 3 of 18) 36? (4 of 11
Work with Congress 83? (15 of 18) 64? (7 of 11
Serve Clientele Needs 0 0 132
Table 17: Role Perception— Outer Cabinet by Type of Appointment
Role Perception Midterm Initial
Policy-making 27$ ( 6 of 22) 28.5$ (4 of 14)
Efficiency and Effectiveness
in Administering Dept. 45$ (10 of 22) 14.0$ (2 of 14)
Follow Laws/Constitution 9$ ( 2 of 22) 36.0$ (5 of 14)
Serve President 41$ ( 9 of 22) 43.0$ (6 of 14)
Serve Nation/Public 36$ ( 8 of 22) 28.5$ (4 of 14)
Work with Congress 45$ (10 of 22) 64.0$ (9 of 14)
Serve Clientele Needs 54.5$ (12 of 22) 21.0$ (3 of 14)
In looking at the outer cabinet, it appears as if an equal
proportion of initial and midterm appointees do harbor vague ideas as to
their position— i.e., "serving the President," or "serving the nation."
This is in contrast to inner cabinet secretaries where there is a
noticeable decline in the numbers holding those views.
But although the midterm appointees to the outer cabinet do suggest
a naive view of the cabinet, there are noticeable differences from the
initial appointees. Over half express a desire to serve and represent
clientele needs, whereas but 21$ of the initial appointees had such a
view. I had expected the reverse, especially in view of the literature
and press reports of the cabinet. As described in Chapter 1, "balance"
has long been used in conceptualizing the President's cabinet— is there representation of a broad range of interests and regions in the cabinet? 133
Yet, as suggested earlier, an outsider's perception of balance may be
different from that of the secretary. Balance is rarely used in
describing replacement appointees, yet over half of those secretaries
viewed their role in representative terms. A President is usually
replacing but one appointee at a time— and the overall balance of the
cabinet is less important than the needs of a particular Department and area. And these midterm replacements do seem to have a greater interest
in the specific task at hand. Nearly one-half perceive their role as administering their Department in the most effective manner with almost
55$ specifically wanting to address the needs of their clientele.
I would suggest that balance is an archaic concept. It really
serves no useful purpose in understanding how cabinet secretaries perceive their role.
A final difference to note is in terms of the role orientation concerning Congress. Initial appointments to the cabinet (both inner and outer cabinet members) equally perceive their job as including working with Congress. However, there is a noticeable drop in terms of
stating this as a role perception on the part of midterm appointments to
the outer cabinet. Recalling that 66$ of all midterm appointments were moving from one federal government position to another, one could assume that this experience would temper their job expectations and make them realistic as to their role and their Department's role in Washington
(the latter will be examined more carefully in Chapter 4). Herbert A. Simon, Donald W. Smithburg, and Victor A. Thompson have described organizations in terms of a contextual framework. Departments and agencies cannot exist in isolation. They are dependent upon external support either via Congress, clientele groups, other departments and agencies, or even the President.^ All departments are dependent upon Congressional authorizations and appropriations in order to exist. Whereas inner cabinet secretaries can expect broad-based support in Congress, the same is not true for outer cabinet secretaries.
As a result they are forced to turn to outside clientele groups for support who will then lobby appropriate congressional committees and 78 subcommittees on their behalf.
In looking at Tables 16 and 17, one can see the strong role perception of serving clientele needs on the part of the midterm appointments to the outer cabinet which is not true of the other three categories, suggesting that these secretaries do appreciate the role of clientele groups in engendering congressional support for their departments. 135
ISSUE NETWORKS
A recent description by Hugh Heclo of the top levels in the
Washington bureaucracy suggests issue networks as a useful conceptual tool. He writes,
Unfortunately, our standard political conceptions of power and control are not very well suited to the loose-jointed play of influence that is emerging in political administration. We tend to look for one group exerting dominance over another, for subgovernments that are strongly insulated from other outside forces in the .environment, for policies that get "produced" by a few "makers." Seeing former government officials opening law firms or joining a new trade association, we naturally think of ways in which they are trying to conquer and control particular pieces of government machinery. • • • • The notion of iron triangles and subgovernments presumes small circles of participants who have succeeded in becoming largely autonomous. Issue networks, on the other hand, comprise a large number of participants with quite variable degrees of mutual commitment or of dependence on others in their environment; in fact it is almost impossible to say where a network leaves off and its environment begins. Iron triangles and subgovernments suggest a stable set of participants coalesced to control fairly narrow public programs which are in the direct economic interest of each party to the alliance. Issue networks are almost the reverse image in each respect. Participants move in and out of the networks constantly. Rather than groups united in dominance over a program, no one, as far as one can tell, is in control of the policies and issues. Any direct material interest is often secondary to intellectual or emotional commitment. Network members reinforce each other’s sense of issues as their interests, rather than (as standard political or economic models would have it) interests defining positions on issues. 9 136
Perhaps this construct is helpful in understanding the secretary's role perception, especially given the high percentage of secretaries throughout this study who do express an understanding of the need to work with Congress. I would hypothesize that if there are issue networks, then past employment experiences of an individual would be of less importance than other factors in determining role perception as there would be a free flowing exchange of "policy politicians**, any of which could be influential in a policy area at a given point in time.
However, whether one was part of the "first cabinet" or was added later could have an influence on one's role. In addition, Heclo states that this is a new phenomena, given the growth of governmental programs, 80 especially welfare spending, in the past 20 years. An examination of the data will test these hypotheses.
While this study is not of sufficient scope to do anything more than superficially touch upon the concept of issue networks, it would appear that one observation could be made. In looking at prior departmental experience, it is interesting to note that only in the case of those midterm replacements who have had no prior departmental experience do fewer than half of the secretaries express a desire to work with Congress. If issue networks do exist, I would expect most of the secretaries to perceive this as a role. Whereas nearly half of the midterm secretaries do envision working with Congress as an expected role, the proportion is not as great as in all of the other categories
(see Table 18). 137
Table 18: Role Perception: Prior Departmental Experience— Initial vs. Midterm Appointments
Worked in Dept No Prior Dept Work
Initial Midterm Initial Midterm
Efficiency and Effectiveness
in Administering Dept 71% 26$ 12.5% 41%
Work with Congress 71$ 74$ 89.0% 47$
Serve Clientele Needs 0 22% 22.0% 41$
N = 7 23 18 17
As one other test of the presence of issue networks, I examined
role perception as a function of most recent employment and predominant
adult employment. Without the presence of issue networks, I would
suspect that one's understanding of governmental processes and the
necessity of working with Congress would vary by past employment
experiences, with those coming from business having far less of an understanding than those who have served as Members of the U.S.
Congress or Assistant Secretaries for Congressional liaison in the
Department of State.
In looking at the results, it appears as if issue networks are present (see Tables 19 and 20). Over half of the appointees express a desire to work with Congress, with the largest proportion coming from those whose employment experiences have seen them crossing back and forth between government and law practice (e.g., Clark Clifford, Dean 138
Acheson.)
Table 19: Role Perception— Last Employment
Business Government— national
Efficiency and Effectiveness
in Administering Dept. 43$ 29$
Work with Congress 52% 58?
Serve Clientele Needs 19% 32%
N = 21 31
Table 20: Role Perception— Predominant Employment
Mixed: Mixed: Govt and Govt and Business Govt-nat. Business Law Efficiency and Effectiveness
in Administering Dept. 33$ 25$ 44$ 25$
Work with Congress 53$ 62.5$ 62.5$ 69$
Serve Clientele Needs 27$ 25$ 31$ 12.5$
N = 15 8 16 16 139
CONCLUSIONS
Based on the research findings presented in this chapter, I offer the following conclusions.
The "Naive" View of the Cabinet
The idea of a certain naivete in cabinet secretaries, where expectations that all cabinet secretaries do have similar roles— i.e., as advisors to the President on a broad spectrum of issues, with cabinet meetings serving a deliberative function, as promulgated by the media,
President, and even the secretaries themselves, does appear to be a useful concept in understanding initial and ensuing relationships between a President and his cabinet after the initial appointments have been made. As has been demonstrated, only changes in particular respects in role perception for the inner cabinet vs. the outer cabinet secretaries were detected. As a result, this naive view that all secretaries serve the same role may have wider application as an explanation for not only the similarities in perceived roles, but also in frustrations that may later arise as the President does use inner cabinet secretaries in a way different than he uses his outer cabinet secretaries. 140
One difference noted, however, is the greater percentage of inner
cabinet vs. outer cabinet secretaries identifying "upholding the
Constitution" as a role. This reflects a role frequently stated by one
particular member of the inner cabinet— i.e., the Attorney General.
There also is a substantially larger percentage of inner cabinet
(76$) vs. outer cabinet (49$) secretaries identifying "working with
Congress" as a role they anticipate performing. I have suggested that
this could be explained in two ways. Perhaps outer cabinet secretaries
perceive working with Congress as a function of their department, in
accordance with a subgovernment view of the policy process. And rather
than view "working with Congress" as a distinct role it is an implicit
responsibility as part of the Department the secretary heads. Another
interpretation is that with 48$ of the inner cabinet, but only 19.5$ of
the outer cabinet secretaries having backgrounds as assistant or deputy
secretaries in the past, perhaps continuing legislative functions begun
in that post (e.g., congressional liaison work, testimony at hearings, providing information to members of Congress) leads the secretary to continue to view working with Congress as a definite part of their new duties.
In looking at the initial appointments a President makes vs. the midterm appointments made as vacancies arise, it would appear as if the
initial appointments tend to have this naive view far more than do the midterm appointments for the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. Far more of the initial appointments than midterm 141
appointments tend to perceive their job in non-specific terms such as
"serving the President" or "serving the nation" or "working with
Congress" as a distinct role. This may best be explained in terms of the past governmental experience of these individuals— 66$ of the midterm appointments, but only 26$ of the initial appointments have had federal governmental experience and hence may have gained a more pragmatic view of their position. As for the Truman administration, the same percentage of midterm and initial appointments were drawn from the federal sector, thus explaining the absence of a naive view of the cabinet for these initial appointees.
Johnson’s Cabinet
It appears as if there is a difference in role orientation as expressed by Johnson’s cabinet secretaries and the cabinet secretaries of the other administrations. "Serving the President" and "working with
Congress" were less important to Johnson’s cabinet than is true for the other cabinets. Instead, administrative management of the departments was viewed as a primary role by many. The inbred sense of working with
Congress as a normal function in heading the department, rather than as the distinct role envisioned by the other secretaries, perhaps can be explained in looking at the governmental background of the respective appointments. In looking at Johnson's appointments, one finds 73$ had 142
had federal governmental experience. Therefore, they were bringing to the post a working knowledge of the federal government. This is in contrast to the cabinet appointments of the Kennedy and Eisenhower administrations, which finds but 23% and 40% respectively of the appointments having served previously in the federal sector. Although a similarly high number of the secretaries in the Truman administration were drawn from the federal sector, they do express a greater interest in working with Congress and in serving the President. As stated, this could be a factor of the change in cabinet structure and the addition of new departments to deal with an expanded federal government beginning with the addition of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and therefore a changed perspective on the nature of the position. The limited time period of this study does not allow for further clarification of this difference. In addition, with Johnson's strong ties to Congress stemming from years as Senate Majority Leader and the establishment of a strong legislative liaison unit under Larry O'Brien in the White House, the direct ties to Congress may not have been as important. But that does not mean that these secretaries were not in contact with appropriate committee members and legislative leaders and on top of relevant legislation. 143
Balance
An interesting finding is the difference between initial and midterm appointments to the outer cabinet and their role perceptions. I would have suspected a greater percentage of initial appointments to be concerned with filling a representational role, given the literature's emphasis on the balance of a President's initial cabinet. Yet only one
fifth of initial appointments to the outer cabinet appeared to be
interested in serving clientele needs, while over half of all midterm appointments envisioned that as a role. This would support the position that the secretary's perception of the job and role can be different from that of the outsider looking in and that "balance" is of little importance to individuals selected for the President's first cabinet. m
Issue Networks
The scope of this study precludes an in-depth analysis of issue
networks, but suffice it to say there does appear to be a shared
understanding of the way policy-making evolves in this country among
cabinet members. Regardless of past employment experience, those moving
back and forth between the private and federal sectors appear to have
the best understanding of a role that will find them working with
Congress, even more so than those who have worked predominantly within
the federal sector.
Summary
This chapter has demonstrated the usefulness of the inner and
outer cabinet distinction, and the concept of the "naive” view of the
cabinet where secretaries do not hold realistic perceptions of the
cabinet. The past work experience of an individual does seem to affect
perception of the position, with a less naive view of the role of the
cabinet coming from those individuals who have had prior federal sector and department experience. This explains why inner cabinet secretaries 145
and midterm appointments tend to view the position in more realistic terms since greater percentages of these individuals have had past department work or other service in the federal government.
The next Chapter will look at the related area of initial department goals and objectives in a continued examination of these frameworks. 146
Chapter 3: Footnotes
1 Thomas E. Cronin, The State of the Presidency (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975), p. 24.
2 Richard A. Watson and Norman C. Thomas, The Politics of the Presidency (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1983), pp. 294-295.
3Ibid.
^ James Q. Wilson, American Government (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1980), p. 321.
k Frank Kessler, The Dilemmas of Presidential Leadership (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1982), p. 85.
6Ibid., p. 89.
n Walter D. Burnham, Democracy in the Making (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1983), p. 317.
Q Cronin, The State of the Presidency, p. 178.
^Harold J. Laski, The American Presidency (Grosset and Dunlap, 1940), pp. 257-258, cited in Cronin, The State of the Presidency, p. 182.
^Robert E. DiClerico, The American President, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1983), pp. 196-197.
11Richard B. Nathan, The Plot That Failed: Nixon and the Administrative Presidency (New York: John Wiley, 1975), p. 37, cited in Robert E. DiClerico, The American President, p. 134.
12 DiClerico, The American President, 2nd ed*, p. 199* 147
13 Kessler, The Dilemmas of Presidential Leadership, p. 90.
^Cronin, The State of the Presidency, p. 60.
15 JJames MacGregor Burns, J. W. Peltason, Thomas E. Cronin, Government by the People, National edition, 12th ed., (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1984), p. 341.
1^During the time frame of this study the New York Times shifted from an 8 column to a 6 column format.
17 John F. Kennedy, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1961-1963).
18 Kennedy, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, January 21, 1961, "Swearing-in-Cereraony," p. 5.
1Q 7Ibid., "Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union," January 30, 1961, p. 27.
20 Harry S. Truman, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 196l—1966), "Special Message to the Congress Recommending the Establishment of a Department of National Defense," December 19, 1945, pp. 555-556.
21 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1958-1961), "Address at the New York Republican State Committee Dinner, Astor Hotel, New York City," May 7, 1953, p. 262.
22 Ibid., "Address at the Annual Convention of the National Young Republican Organization, Mount Rushmore National Monument, South Dakota," June 11, 1953, P- 406.
23 Truman, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, April 17, 1945, p. 13. 148
24 Lyndon B. Johnson, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, year), "Remarks to Leaders of Organizations Concerned with the Problems of Senior Citizens," January 15, 196M, p. 134.
25 Ibid, "The President's News Conference of June 17, 1965," p. 675.
2 6 Edward S. Corwin, "Wanted: A New Type of Cabinet," New York Times, October 10, 1948, sec. 6, p. 14.
27 Henry Fairlie, The Kennedy Promise (Doubleday, 1973), P* 167, cited in Cronin, The State of the Presidency, p. 186.
28 Clinton Rossiter, The American Presidency, 2nd ed., rev. (New York: New American Library, Inc., 1962), p. 235.
29Ibid., p. 236.
30 Emmette S. Redford, David B. Truman, Alan F. Westin, and Robert C. Wood, Politics and Government in the United States, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1968), p. 337.
3 ^Richard F. Fenno, Jr., The President's Cabinet (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), p. 64.
32Ibid., p. 155.
33 J. Edward Day, My Appointed Round: 929 Days as Postmaster General (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), pp. 95-97*
34Ibid.
35Ibid.
36Ibid. 149
37 Orville L. Freeman, Oral History Interview, Charles T. Morrisey, Kennedy Library, July 22, 1964, pp. 30-31.
In this chapter, as in the next, three secretaries have been dropped from the analysis. Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, appointed by Roosevelt in 1933, and serving under Truman until March of 1946, and Henry Wallace, Secretary of Commerce, appointed by Roosevelt shortly before his death in 1945 and serving until September of 1946, have been excluded from the analysis since their initial role perception would include a Roosevelt administration, which is not a focus of this study, rather than the Truman administration. Also, Robert Wood, Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who only served 2 weeks at the end of the Johnson administration, has been excluded due to his short duration in that post.
39 Richard F. Fenno, Jr., The President’s Cabinet, p. 34.
40Ibid., p. 34.
41 U. S. Congress, Senate, Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Stewart L. Udall, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 13, 1961, p. 22.
42 U. S. Congress, Senate, Post Office and Civil Service Committee, Confirmation Hearing for J. Edward Day, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 16, 1961.
43 J. Edward Day, My Appointed Round: 929 Days as Postmaster General, pp. 52-54.
44 U. S. Congress, Senate, Labor and Public Welfare Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Arthur J. Goldberg, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 13, 1961, p. 3.
45 U. S. Congress, Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, Confirmation Hearing for John Foster Dulles, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., January 15, 1953, p. 21.
^Ibid., p. 26. 150
^ L u t h e r Hodges, Oral History Interview, Dan B. Jacobs, Kennedy Library, Mary 19, 21, 1964; May 18, 1964, p. 40 (revised numbering).
48 U. S. Congress, Senate, Labor and Public Welfare Committee, Confirmation Hearing for James P. Mitchell, 83rd Cong., 2nd sess., January 18, 1954, p. 3.
40 Finding Aid for the Papers of James P. Mitchell, Eisenhower Library, p. 2.
^°Luther Hodges, Oral History Interview, pp. 31-32 (revised numbering).
51U. S. Congress, Senate, Agriculture and Forestry Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Orville L. Freeman, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 13, 1961.
52 Orville L. Freeman, Oral History, p. 29.
c4 J U. S. Congress, Senate, Finance Committee. Confirmation Hearing for C. Douglas Dillon, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 11, 13, 1961.
55Ibid., p. 7
56Ibid., p. 13.
57Ibid., p. 32.
S. Congress, Senate, Agriculture and Forestry Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Ezra Taft Benson, 83rd, Cong., 1st sess, January 15, 1953, P« 2.
59Ibid., p. 26. 151
^®Ezra Taft Benson, Cross Fire: The Eight Years With Eisenhower (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1962), p. 30.
^ Dav i d Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1973), pp. 605-606.
go Biographical sketch, Name File, "John A. Gronouski," July, 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.
^U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Public Welfare, Confirmation Hearing for Arthur J. Goldberg, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 13, 1961, pp. 3-4.
64 U.S., Congress, Senate, Finance Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Abraham Ribicoff, 87th Cong., 1st. sess., January 11, 1961, p. 7.
65 James David Barber, The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House (Englewood Clifs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1977), P. 53.
E. Kintner, Memo to Mrs. Juanita Roberts, CF FG100/MC, October 7, 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.
^ R . E. Kintner, Memo to Mrs. Juanita Roberts, CF FG100/MC, Subject: Cabinet Meeting, 5-17-67, May 19, 1967, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.
^®R. E. Kintner, Memo to H. Fowler, CF FG100/M, Subject: 2-1-67 Cabinet Meeting, February 2, 1967, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.
^ R . E. Kintner, Memo to L. O ’Brien and J. Califano, 1-16-67, regarding 1-18-67 Cabinet Meeting, CF FG100/M, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.
70 Janet M. Martin, "The President’s Cabinet— The Secretary’s Perspective: An Examination of Role Perception and Goals," paper 152
presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 1983.
Luther Hodges, Oral History Interview, p. 36 (revised numbering).
72 Ibid., p. 35 (revised numbering).
73 In this time frame the median length of stay for inner cabinet members is 35 months and for outer cabinet members is 32 months, although the mean length of stay is 38.1 months for inner cabinet members and 39 months for outer cabinet members, and the mode is 1 1/2 to 2 years for inner cabinet members and 2 1/2 to 3 years for outer cabinet members.
"^Randall B. Ripley, Congress Process and Policy (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1978); Randall B. Ripley and Grace A. Franklin, Congress, the Bureaucracy, and Public Policy, rev. ed. (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1980).
7*5 Martin, "The President's Cabinet— The Secretary's Perspective: An Examination of Role Perception and Goals"
^ A s stated in Chapter 2, since both Truman and Johnson succeeded to the presidency upon the deaths of Roosevelt and Kennedy, respectively, each inherited a cabinet. But each President dealt with his holdover cabinet in a different fashion. Truman replaced most of the Roosevelt appointees within the first few months of his administration. In contrast, Johnson retained most of the Kennedy appointees, at least through the end of 1964, when he won the presidency in his own right. For the purpose of this analysis, all appointments made after the first six months of Truman's administration are considered midterm appointments. All appointments made by Johnson after November, 1964, are considered midterm appointments. Therefore, the midterm appointments for Truman are: Dean Acheson, Charles Brannan, Oscar Chapman, Jesse Donaldson, James Forrestal, William A. Harriman, Louis Johnson, Julius Krug, Robert Lovett, George Marshall, James McGranery, James McGrath, Charles Sawyer, John Snyder, and Maurice Tobin.
^Herbert A. Simon, Donald W. Smithburg, and Victor A. Thompson, Public Administration (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950), p. 383. 153
78Ibid., p. H01
79 Hugh Heclo, nIssue Networks and the Executive Establishment," in Anthony King, ed., The New American Political System (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), p. 102.
80Ibid., pp. 87-1211. CHAPTER 4; DEPARTMENT GOALS
Not only is the secretary's perception of his or her role important, but so are the goals a cabinet secretary envisions for the department at the start of his or her tenure. These goals set the initial tone for the department for the next few years. Goals may change over time, but initial goals are useful since they serve as a guide for both department action and leadership activity on the part of the presidential appointees within the department.
In this chapter, I will begin with a discussion of the methodology used to ascertain how each secretary perceived his or her respective
Department's goal orientation. I will then explore goal orientation by
Administration. Thirdly, as with the analyses in Chapter 3, I will examine goal orientation by department. And finally, after this longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of cabinet secretaries, I will return to the various frameworks used throughout this study (the inner and outer cabinet distinction, midterm versus initial appointments, the
"naive" view of the cabinet, and prior work experience), examining their appropriateness in explaining departmental goal orientation as defined by the cabinet secretaries.
154 155
METHODOLOGY
Before examining methodological procedures, it is important to
state that the goals identified in this chapter reflect pronouncements
made by the secretaries as to the objectives and direction envisioned
for their respective departments. In contrast to the types of
statements used in analyzing the secretary’s individual role perspective
in Chapter 3, statements examined for this chapter deal with the
secretary’s intentions regarding future department emphasis and
department orientation. The secretary can envision a role for himself
or herself that is different from that the Department will play.
As an example of this distinction, as stated in Chapter 3 in the
case of Stewart L. Udall’s confirmation hearing to the post of Secretary
of the Interior in the Kennedy cabinet, Udall distinguished his
position as different from that, say, of a bureau commissioner. For
example, as Udall explained, Floyd E. Dominy, Commissioner of
Reclamation, was in a line position and not in a policy making post. As
Udall stated, ”...there are times when either by default or purpose,
these people are made into policy officers because someone else does not want to take the rap for something, but I regard this (the Commissioner of Reclamation) as a largely line office. It may mean extra burdens, but I intend to make the policy and consult with my associates within 156
the Department when necessary on it."1
A modified content analytic approach, as described in Chapter 3> was used to gain information as to how each secretary perceived their respective department's goal orientation. Once again, public pronouncements and internal communications provide the data base for this analysis.
Especially useful for this part of the study were the administrative histories written at the end of the Johnson
Administration, Senate confirmation hearings, oral histories, and initial press conferences and interviews recorded in the New York Times.
Given the lack of published confirmation hearings for the Truman appointees, memoranda from the Secretary to Department officials and/or the President and White House Staff were especially useful for that administration.
Again, I am aware of complications with using public statements and material'that is available in the presidential libraries; I discussed these problems in Chapter 3* However, in the case of determining the secretary's perspective on department goal orientation, this approach is less problematic in that a secretary's intentions for the department would have to be publicly communicated, and communicated in accordance with the secretary's true intentions, if he or she is ever to see those goals carried out by the department. 157
A coding scheme was developed to categorize the goal statements.
This coding scheme will be described in the remainder of this section.
The Categorization Scheme
I found that departmental goals envisioned by cabinet secretaries fell into approximately fifteen broad categories. The six most common goals are shown in Table 21.
Table 21: Secretaries' Goals for Department, 1945 to 1969
Work on President's Priorities/Platform 24?
Policy-making 32?
Work With and Seek Congressional Advice 24?
Minimize and/or Manage Intragovernmental Conflict 16?
Efficiency in Department 18?
Serve Group Interests 21?
Serve the Public 16?
Inform the Public 9?
N = 68
In addition, department goals identified by at most two or three secretaries have been omitted from the analysis that follows. These include: working on intergovernmental relations; boosting department's 158
reputation; working on employment and working conditions for department personnel; maintaining predecessor's programs; and finally, turning over department programs and activities to the private sector and/or the states.
Work on President's Priorities/Platform
In this category I have included statements made by cabinet secretaries stating that their respective departments will be working to follow priorities as set by the President. As stated above, whereas the role perceptions identified in Chapter 3 pertain to the role envisioned by the secretary for himself or herself, the goals identified in this chapter reflect the secretary's vision for the department. In some instances the role envisioned for the secretary and the goals identified for the department may be similar. For example, Robert Kennedy, in his confirmation hearing for the post of Attorney General in his brother's cabinet, continually states that he and the Justice Department will follow the President's recommendations. When questions were asked as to the provisions in the Democratic Party platform on civil rights and how the Justice Department would deal with those provisions, Kennedy responded in a fashion deferential to the Office of the President:
All the facts will have to be examined, and then, if President-elect Kennedy requests a recommendation from the Department of Justice, we will study the matter and make a recommendation to the President. What he does finally or 159
ultimately in this field will be up to the President of the United States, not me.
When a Senator pursued this line of questioning and asked whether it is not a part of the role of the Attorney General and the Justice
Department to make recommendations, Kennedy replied:
If I am asked for the recommendation, and, as you point out, it has been traditional that the Department of Justice has been requested for recommendations, assuming that that continues in the future, which I anticipate that it will, we will make an examination of all the facts, the legislation that exists at the present time, and if we find that we feel that further legislation is necessary, legislation will be suggested, recommended to the President. After that, he will examine all the facts, and if he feels legislation is necessary, he will then submit it to the Senate and the House of Represenatives.’
Policy-making
In terms of departmental goals, in this categorization scheme policy-making includes remarks made concerning those subcabinet appointees and bureau heads under the secretary playing an active part initially in the policy-making process— that is, these individuals will participate in the setting of policy in their respective departments.
It also includes the department as a collectivity working on policy in various areas. It does not include the department as implementers of policy as set by other actors, for example, the President.
For example, in the collection of letters James Forrestal wrote to various individuals concerning the unification of the armed forces in a 160
new Defense Department, there is a letter to General Eisenhower responding to an earlier memo Eisenhower had sent concerning the progress of unification. Forrestal writes:
I propose to expand somewhat your idea of weekly lunches with the three Chiefs to this extent: I propose to get them away with me for a long week-end once every two or three months....On these occasions I am going to have an agenda of unsettled questions on which we will try to get decisions during that interval. The difficulty with this town is the constant interruptions from various sources with consequent failure to get any time for sustained thinking. Some of the questions that face the Joint Chiefs and all of us are, as you know, of a character that cannot be settled^either off the cuff or in a half hour generalized discussion.
Similarly, Ezra Taft Benson held weekly policy meetings with what he viewed as his policy staff— that is, the Under Secretary, Assistant
Secretaries, and other staff aides. In addition, "smaller groups met with me often on special problems....Once a month we held a luncheon for all agency heads. The agenda included open discussion, reports, announcements, and sometimes a formal presentation...."^ 161
Work with and Seek Congressional Advice
Another goal orientation for departments is that of working with
Congress, especially relevant committees, and seeking congressional input in department proposals and activities. For example, shortly after heading the Treasury Department, Henry Fowler sent a memo to all presidential appointees in the department to explain what was expected of employees in terms of facilitating the successful passage of legislation beneficial to Treasury's interests. In part the memo stated that:
Treasury legislation, almost by definition, can rarely be classed as popular legislation. As I look back over the past four years, I would estimate that the majority of Treasury proposals would either have been defeated by the Congress or distorted out of all proportion had it not been for the close and continuing relationship that we maintained with the Congress. It is obviously impossible for us to formulate a progosal, send it forward to the Congress, and forget about it.
And Fowler felt that the top appointees in Treasury should be facilitating congressional relations and monitoring congressional activity. In addition, Fowler wrote that
It should be obvious that a pending vote in committee or on the floor takes priority over all other Department affairs. The only possible exception would be the execution of a direct Presidential order— and President Johnson would be extremely unlikely to interfere with this priority. This priority applies across-the-board— to me as well as to all other officials of the Treasury.' 162
Minimize and/or Manage Intragovernmental Conflict
In this category are included statements urging cooperation among departments and agencies throughout the Executive Branch. For example, during his confirmation hearing for the post of Secretary of the
Treasury, C. Douglas Dillon stated his intention that "there should be the closest cooperation and coordination between the Treasury Department o and the Federal Reserve Board.". Later in the hearing, when asked if
Treasury would dictate policy to the Federal Reserve Board, Dillon stressed the need for independence of the Board, yet the need for cooperation between Treasury and the Board. "I do not necessarily think that independence means that there should be action without consultation and without cooperation. I think that we can maintain a full
O independence and, at the same time, have cooperation."^
Other Kennedy appointees expressing similar views included Dean
Rusk and Robert McNamara. During his confirmation hearing, McNamara stated that he had "already discussed with the Secretary of
State-designate, Dean Rusk, relationships between the two Departments, and we have agreed that we expect them to be cordial, close, and intimate at all levels."10
Similarly, Dean Rusk also expressed the need for the State
Department to work with other departments and agencies involved in 163
foreign policy during his confirmation hearing. For example, in
discussing the diplomatic corps abroad, Rusk emphasized the importance of policy coordination in Washington
in order that the ambassadorial coordination in the field can be effective. I do believe that there is such diversity among countries that operational decisions need to be made on the spot, that it is important to allow the ambassadors very large freedom of action in the field. This can be possible only if there is very close coordination of policy in Washington among the agencies that we are talking about. I believe that we can work that out satisfactorily with the USIA and, of course, the ICA, which is now under the direction of the Secretary of State for Policy matters, and continue to make improvements on that point. 164
Efficiency in Department
Smoother relations are not only sought between departments and agencies, but also within a department, as expressed in statements included in the category of efficiency in the department. Typical of
such statements are the memoes by cabinet secretaries in the Johnson
Administration addressing this subject of efficiency in respective departments, including one sent by Nicholas Katzenbach for a cabinet report. Katzenbach writes, "the Department of Justice has been actively engaged in the reassessment of its activities and procedures,
in searching out new directions, and in achieving maximum effectiveness 12 at lowest cost." Katzenbach goes on to outline the activities envisioned for the Justice Department in order to meet this goal of efficiency and effectiveness for the department. For example,
Katzenbach writes,
We believe that we under-utilize our top legal officials if we restrict them solely to the specialized areas under their supervision. To achieve an exchange of information, expertise, and experience among these skilled lawyers, we have — instituted staff conferences at which serious problems in one Division are considered by the heads of all Divisions; — Assigned heads of certain Divisions to assist heads of other Divisions on particularly difficult or sensitive projects. 165
In addition, Katzenbach writes,
We have established a central office for the coordination of all our electronic data processing activities and are seeking new applications of computers to — Mass storage and retrieval of legal information; — Control of caseloads and dockets; — Information on events and subjects in the organized crime field; — The prediction of the effects of proposed policies in such areas as antitrust, civil rights, and crime reduction; — The assembling of crime information and statistics from state and local agencies for distribution to such agencies and for analyses of crime trends and patterns.
Katzenbach also includes a discussion of cost reduction objectives for the Department of Justice.
Serve Group Interests
Moving to an external department orientation are statements concerning the cultivating of clientele support by the department.
Statements in this category include the remarks made by Luther Hodges during an oral history interview with the Kennedy Library. When asked what his conception was, when he arrived at Commerce, "of the role of the Department in relation to the business community and U.S. economic growth," Hodges replied
...Strangely enough,..., the businessman shys (sic) away, or did shy away, from the Department of Commerce, or any 166
other Department of Government. For example,... ,the business man says that Labor Department represents labor and the Department of Agriculture represents the farmers and so forth, why don't you represent us? Or why doesn't somebody represent business? And I said, freely and openly, "That is what we are doing. We are spending millions of your money, giving you services of all kinds, modernization conferences, trade fairs, trade missions,...,etc., all over the world and we practically never hear from you." I say that with 30 years background as a businessman I never thought of the Department of Commerce in the whole 30 years. It never crossed my mind because I was against Government as most businessmen still are."
The Public
The final department goal orientations to be discussed are those of serving and informing the public. Included in the category of serving the public are all explicit references made concerning the department having as a top priority service to the general public. Throughout his confirmation hearing to the newly created post of Secretary of
Transportation, Alan S. Boyd stated repeatedly the mission of the new department as serving the general public. Boyd explained this objective as follows: "I conceive the Department of Transportation, it is to promote transportation in the public interest, which means the interest of the tranportation operators and the interest of the shipper and the consumer."^
In terms of informing the public, an illustration of the types of statements included in this category would be statements made by Robert
S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson 167
Administrations. Throughout his confirmation hearing, McNamara stressed the efforts the Department would take to keep the public informed of
Defense activities. He discussed the appointment of Arthur Sylvester to the post of Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs as facilitating that communication objective. When asked if he would hold regular press conferences McNamara responded, "I have met with the press already on two or three occasions and told them that I expect to keep them fully informed of the activities of the Defense Department, not because I think the press per se has the right to that, but because I think the public has the right to that."^
In looking at the Administrative History for the Department of
Defense, there is included a section dealing with the Defense
Department’s efforts at keeping the public informed. In a memo sent to all of the Secretaries of the Military Departments, Assistant
Secretaries, and various staff and unit heads from Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Phil G. Goulding, there is a discussion of the upcoming 38th Joint Civilian Orientation Conference to be convened by the Secretary. Along with an outline of the conference objectives is a statement about the purpose of the conference series, which was a
"program of the Secretary of Defense," serving "as a report to the nation on the manner in which the mission of the Department of Defense 18 is being discharged," 168
Role Perception versus Department Goals
Before analyzing goal orientation, it is important to first
clarify the difference between the secretary's role perception and the
secretary's view of department goals.
In looking at Table 22 there are some similarities as well as
dissimilarities in terms of department goal orientation mirroring the
individual secretary's role perception. For example, in 41/6 of cases where the secretary envisioned his or her department working with
Congress, they also viewed their own role as that of working with
Congress. Yet even in this example where the correspondence between department goals and the secretary’s role perception is the greatest,
less than half of the secretaries are perceiving a similar role for
themselves and the department. The similarities that do appear in these
two variables can be explained, in part, as a function of the documents used to ascertain roles and goals. For example, the same Senate
testimony was used to code both role perception and department goals.
But on a theoretical level there should be some differences since these two variables are not the same. Role perception reflects the secretary's behavioral orientation to the position— and department goal orientation reflects department objectives and not necessarily the behavior required to meet those objectives. And we do see some differences in Table 22. TABIE 22: DEPAKMNT GQAI5 BY FOIE PERCEPTION
Role Perception for Self
Work Efficiency and Follow Serve Serve Serve With Effectiveness in Laws/ Clientele Nation/ President Policy Congress Adninistering Department Constitution Needs Public Department Goals
Work on President's Priorities/Platform 33.0% 8.0% 22.0% 8.0% 10.0% 10.0% 8.0% (N=49)
Policy 18.5% 20.0% 28.0% 11.0% 7.0% 5.5% 9.0% (N=54)
Work with and seek congressional advice 15.0% 10.0% 41.0% 15.0% 7.0% 5.0% 7.0% (N=41)
Manage intragovernmental conflict 17.0% 8.0% 25.0% 21.0% 8.0% 4.0% 17.0% (N=24) Efficiency in Department 14.0% 14.0% 17.0% 27.5% 7.0% 7.0% 14.0% (N=29)
Serve Group Interests 15.0% 5.0% 26.0% 10.0% 5.0% 26.0% 13.0% (N=39)
Serve Public 13.5% 8.0% 22.0% 13.5% 11.0% 13.5% 19.0% (N=37)
Inform Public 6.0% 6.0% 19.0% 12.5% 25.0% 6.0% 25.0% (N=16) 171
Since visual inspection of Table 22 does suggest some overlap in the coding of roles and department goals it is important to address the question as to whether these two variables overlap to such an extent that there is the problem of their measuring the same thing.
In looking at several statistics appropriate for measuring the degree of relationship between two nominal level variables, the correlation between roles and goals in Table 22 is small. The Goodman and Kruskal’s symmetric tau is only .03 and the uncertainty coefficient is only .04. Cramer’s V is also appropriate for a non-square table, and it is just . 17.\^
The application of a significance test to these data is of dubious value since these data are of the entire population of cabinet 20 secretaries from 1945 to 1969 and not a sample. Still, if one viewed a significance test as appropriate, the chi-square value is 51.696 with 42 degrees of freedom, and is not significant. This means that a systematic relationship between these variables is not present.
With the low values for Goodman and Kruskal's tau, the uncertainty coefficient, and Cramer's V, as well as the chi-square value indicating statistical independence, I would be fairly confident in stating that there is not a statistical relationship between these two variables and the comments made by secretaries concerning their roles are different from the comments made by secretaries concerning goals for their
21 department. 172
GOALS BY ADMINISTRATION
To begin an analysis of department goal orientation on the part of cabinet secretaries, I will begin by chronologically examining goals by
Administration. In looking at the various administrations, the goals of the Truman cabinet were disparate, with no one goal predominating (see
Table 23).
Table 23: Goals by Administration
Goals Truman Eisenhower Kennedy Johnsoi
Work on President's
Priorities/Platform 24.0% 15.0* 46.0% 14.0?
Policy-making 28.5 55.0 15.0 21.0
Work with and seek
Congressional advice 14.0 20.0 31.0 36.0
Minimize intragovernmental
conflict 9.5 10.0 31.0 21.0
Efficency in Department 28.5 15.0 31.0 36.0
Serve Group Interests 24.0 15.0 23.0 21.0
Serve the Public 9.5 20.0 23.0 14.0
Inform the Public 5.0 10.0 8.0 14.0
N = 21 20 13 14
(Up to 3 goals were identified for each secretary.) 173
By contrast, in the case of the Eisenhower cabinet, over half of the members identified specific policy-making goals. This would tend to support Eisenhower's style of delegating responsibility for policy-making to his cabinet members. A memo of Arthur Flemming to
President Eisenhower gives recommendations for the President's upcoming
State of the Union Message, and prefaces his suggestions by recalling that "I remember that early in your administration you stressed the fact that you did not want members of the cabinet to function solely as representatives of their Departments but to also think of themselves as general advisors to you. It is in that spirit that I would like to pass 22 on the following reactions to you personally." A number of similar exchanges between cabinet members and President Eisenhower reflect the 23 encouragement given cabinet members to give policy advice.
The secretaries serving under President Kennedy identified working on the priorities determined by Kennedy as a primary goal— far more than did the secretaries serving under the other three Presidents. This reflects the statements made by most of Kennedy's cabinet of their intent to serve the President, as described in Chapter 3.
No single goal predominated in the Johnson cabinet, but one of the most prevalent goals was working with Congress. That fits with
Johnson's congressional background and the importance he gave to working with Congress. The other goal that was as common for the Johnson appointees was departmental efficiency. In reading Administrative
Histories (which are unique to the Johnson Administration during the 174
time frame of this study) it becomes apparent that department efficiency, and strong management were important objectives throughout the Johnson administration. All the Presidents of this study did emphasize department efficiency and cost-effectiveness in their oh respective first State of the Union Addresses. But from a subjective viewpoint, there appears to be a greater emphasis in this area throughout the Johnson administration in comparison with the three other administrations. For example, eight days after succeeding to the
Presidency, one of Johnson’s first memoranda for Department heads stated his pledge "that the Executive Branch will be administered with the utmost thrift and frugality; that the Government will get a dollar's value for a dollar spent; and that the Government will set an example of 25 prudence and economy.” And, six months later, Johnson described to the press the first of a series of cabinet meetings to be held on
"management of the Executive Branch." Johnson told the press that "in our efforts to increase efficiency and economy in the executive branch, we ought to be as unsatisfied as a little boy's appetite...From time to time, therefore, I will devote a meeting of the Cabinet and agency 2 6 heads to progress reports on these efforts." GOALS BY DEPARTMENT
Now we will examine broad goal categories by department. Again, in an attempt at categorization, a logical starting point in examining the goals a cabinet secretary sets for the department at the start of tenure is a look at goals by department to see where there are commonalities and differences (see Table 24). TABLE GOALS BY DEPARTMENT
Goals Attorney Postmaster State Treasury Defense General General Interior Work on President's Priorities/Platform 50%(3 of 6) 28.5%(2 of 7) 0 25.0% (2 of 8) 0 20% (1 of 5)
Policy 50% (3 of 6) 43.0%(3 of 7) 56%(5 of 9) 0 14.0%(1 of 7) 20%(1 of 5)
Work with and seek Congressional advice 33%(2 of 6) 43.0%(3 of 7) 22%(2 of 9) 25.0%(2 of 8) 28.5%(2 of 7) 20%(1 of 5)
Manage Intragovernmental Conflict 17%(1 of 6) 14.0%(1 of 7) 44%(4 of 9) 12.5%(1 of 8) 0 20%(1 of 5)
Efficiency in Department 0 0 33%(3 of 9) 25.0%(2 of 8) 43.0%(3 of 7) 0
Serve Group Interests (e.g., business, labor) 0 0 0 0 28.5%(2 of 7) 0
Serve Public 0 28.5%(2 of 7) 0 0 14.0%(1 of 7) 0
Inform Public 0 0 22%(2 of 9) 25.0%(2 of 8) 0 20%(1 of 5)
Agriculture Commerce Labor HEW HUD Transportation Work on President's Priorities/Platform 25%(1 of 4) 12.5%(1 of 8) 50%(3 of 6) 28.5%(2 of 7) 0 100% (1 of 1)
Policy 50% (2 of 4) 37.5%(3 of 8) 17%(1 of 6) 28.5% (2 of 7) 100% (1 of 1) 0
Work with and seek Congressional advice 25%(1 of 4) 25.0%(2 of 8) 0 14.0%(1 of 7) 0 0
Manage Intragovernmental Conflict 0 12.5%(1 of B) 17%(1 of 6) 14.0%(1 of 7) 0 0
Efficiency in Department 50% (2 of 4) 12.5% (1 of 8) 0 0 100%(1 of 1) 0
Serve Group Interests (e.g., business, labor) 50%(2 of 4) 62.5%(5 of 8) 83%(5 of 6) 0 0 0 176
Serve Public 50%(2 of 4) 12.5%(1 of 8) 50%(3 of 6) 14.0%(1 of 7) 0 100%(1 of 1)
Inform Public 0 12.5%(1 of 8) 0 0 0 177
In looking at Table 24, there are several patterns that appear.
Regarding policy expectations for the departments, there does seem to be a difference among them. The three inner cabinet departments of
State, Treasury, and Defense have policy demands placed on them by about half of their respective secretaries, as does the Department of
Agriculture. And Robert Weaver, first Secretary of the Department of
Housing and Urban Development, and Oveta Culp Hobby, first Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, also envision their respective departments providing policy recommendations. A noticeable difference is that none of the Attorneys General envision a policy role for their department, unlike the other inner cabinet departments. The
Department of Justice appears to serve more as an administrative unit to assist the Attorney General in the enforcement of laws than as a policy-making body, or so the Attorneys General think at the time of 27 their appointments.
An interesting cluster appears in looking at the departments expected to serve group interests. At least half of the secretaries in the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor envision their department serving clientele needs. In rethinking the outer cabinet definition proposed by Cronin, that is, "by custom, if not by designation, these cabinet officers assume a relatively straightforward pO advocacy orientation that overshadows their counseling role," it strikes me that there are only a few cabinet secretaries that assume such a "straightforward advocacy orientation." The Departments of 178
Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor all have easily identifiable clientele
groups that were successful at various points of time in the country’s
history in obtaining a cabinet department to represent their particular
interests. In contrast, the remaining outer cabinet departments
represent a less clearly defined clientele. For example, the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare can be serving the interests
of higher education, elementary and secondary schools, hospitals, the
poor, and so forth. The Department of the Interior can be protecting
the interests of environmentalists plus the interests of those wanting
leasing rights for mineral deposits in governmental lands, or those wanting timber from U.S. forests.
By way of example, in looking at several Secretaries of the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare the diversity of interests represented by that Department become apparent. John Gardner, coming
from the Carnegie Corporation to head the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare in 1965, had such a strong identification with education that a reporter present at a news conference announcing the appointment asked President Johnson if his "appointment of Mr. Gardner suggest(s) that there will be less interest now in the creation of a 2Q separate Department of Education?" In contrast, Wilbur Cohen was easily identified with other aspects of HEW, especially the social
security system. In writing to President Johnson in support of the
promotion of Cohen to the position of Under Secretary of HEW, John Macy wrote, "Wilbur Cohen is the most thorough professional in HEW’s social
programs in the entire country. Since 1931* he has served as employee, 179
consultant, and Presidential appointee in connection with the design and development of the social security system." Macy went on to elaborate on the varied aspects of HEW's programs that Cohen had handled. "The success of education, social security, medicare, drug control, and other legislation is at least partially attributable to his ability as a draftsman, negotiator and persuader."J
Perhaps the definition suggested by Cronin for the outer cabinet most clearly applies to the Departments of Agriculture, Labor, and
Commerce. The remaining Departments of the outer cabinet can still have an advocacy role, but of a more varied nature, especially the recent additions of Housing and Urban Development and Health, Education and
Welfare which encompass a broad range of interests. (As Johnson went on to indicate in the press conference noted above, the appointment of
Gardner did not mean all of education's needs were met— the administration and education lobby would continue to push for a separate
Department of Education, finally realizing this goal in the Carter administration.)
In looking at the other outer cabinet departments, it is impossible to determine if Transportation would fit the outer cabinet pattern of the Departments of Agriculture, Labor, and Commerce with but one case and Transportation being added to the cabinet in the last two years of this study. However, Alan S. Boyd, the first Secretary of
Transportation, made it clear during the course of his confirmation hearing to this post, that the department would not be an apologist for 180
51 various interests. Boyd moved from the position of Under Secretary of
Commerce for Transportation to the post of Secretary of Transportation
and, at the same time, transferred "most of the functions and
personnel" of his bureau in the Department of Commerce to the new 32 Department. According to the Administrative History for the Department
of Transportation prepared at the end of the Johnson Administration,
"Boyd and his staff had a prominent role in drafting legislation and in
the formation of the Department and particularly in the decisions concerning the structure and functions of the organization."^ Boyd organized the Under and Assistant Secretaries along functional lines, so
they could work on the total picture, and not just the problems of air Oil transportation, highways, water travel, and so forth.J If the successors to Boyd have held similar views this outer cabinet department would also seem different from Commerce, Labor, and Agriculture in terms of their serving identifiable clientele, but similar to the Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Health, Education and Welfare, which encompass a broader set of interests.
The Postmasters General do appear to also have a broader mission than serving a particular clientele— that of moving the mails as quickly and efficiently as possible. As described in Chapter 3, J. Edward Day,
Kennedy’s first Postmaster General, stressed department management and means to reduce the Post Office deficit in both his confirmation hearing and autobiography.^ Similarly, Arthur E. Summerfield’s handling of the
Post Office Department was described by one of his subcabinet members, 181
Eugene J. Lyons, in terms of the administrative and management changes made to the Department. Summerfield was viewed as a ’'good administrator.’’3 Efforts were made to reduce the bloated employment rolls that resulted from rewarding those "deserving people who would vote the correct way."^ Lyons noted that "Summerfield had reduced the employment by some 80,000 in the first four years. He was bent on either eliminating completely or greatly reducing the postal deficit."^®
In addition, under Summerfield, the Department "insisted on administrative experience in every postmaster that we appointed....we got some fine administrators in the Post Office Department, men who had a great deal of experience at business and attempted to run a post office the same as any other business and it enabled us to save a lot of money."J 3
The final department to consider is that of Interior. Unlike the
Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Agriculture which have had an 40 identifiable and consistent clientele, Interior's mission is not as clear. Although Oscar Chapman, Secretary of Interior under Truman
n i described himself as a "conservation officer," he still identified the varied functions of Interior: "it was a cross-section of functions including conservation of land and conservation of human resources, lip coordinated with land use resources." Timber and mineral rights to land held by the United States Government has long been a troubling issue for the Department. In an editorial the New York Times praised the appointment of Stewart Udall as Kennedy’s Secretary of Interior, and described the tension that has historically plagued Interior. "The 182
Department of the Interior historically has been buffeted between the exploitationists, who are legion, and the preservationists, who until recent years have been relatively few."1^ udall was viewed as someone who would be sympathetic to the need to see that the nation's "resources lili be conserved for wise use and permanent protection." A startling contrast to Udall, Oscar Chapman, and Fred Seaton (described in 1960 by
lie the New York Times as "one of the best Secretaries in recent years," ) was the tenure of James Watt as Secretary during Reagan's first term.
The New York Times aptly described the conflict that was to reign throughout Watt's tenure:
Some ardent conservationists and officials of environmentalist organizations greeted the selection of Mr. Watt with dismay and hostility. They have voiced displeasure that he has directed a conservative legal foundation that has used their own weapon, the public interest lawsuit, against what Mr. Watt describes as "extremist" environmental organizations that have used the courts so effectively to shape or to obstruct government policies affecting the public lands and the environment.
The Times reported that William Turnage, executive director of the
Wilderness Society, had "recently called Mr. Watt 'a joke' a 'caricature 47 of an anticonservationist.'" '
Although there do appear to be some differences suggested in looking across departments, Table 26 is quite unwieldy. A return to the various frameworks used in the analysis in Chapter 3 provides a means to look for commonalities among departments or groups of secretaries in terms of the goals envisioned for respective departments. 183
FRAMEWORKS:
INNER CABINET VS. THE OUTER CABINET
To return to the frameworks for analysis used in Chapters 2 and 3,
I will begin by looking at inner and outer cabinet distinctions. The inner vs. outer cabinet distinction appears to be of some importance in understanding the goals a secretary sets for his or her Department (see
Table 25). By a slight margin, more inner cabinet secretaries expect their Departments to be policy specialists and initiators than do outer cabinet secretaries. And, in conjunction with this, the sharing of information across Department lines with interdepartmental cooperation is a more prevalent view among the inner cabinet secretaries. 184
Table 25s Goals— Inner Cabinet vs. the Outer Cabinet
Goals Inner Cabinet Outer Cabinet
Work on President's Priorities/
Platform 24* 23%
Policy-making 38% 28%
Work With and Seek Congressional
Advice 31% 18%
Manage Intragovernmental Conflict 24% 10%
Efficiency in Department 17% 18%
Serve Public 7% 23%
Inform Public 14% 5%
Serve Group Interests (e.g., business,
labor) 0 36%
N = 29 39
If the secretaries of the inner cabinet do anticipate a broad policy role, as appears to be the case, this need for interdepartmental cooperation is appropriate. Only through interdepartmental cooperation can comprehensive plans and programs be undertaken.
An important difference between the inner and outer cabinet secretaries is in their expectations concerning their Department's role vis a vis the public. The inner cabinet members see their Department as having little, if any, role with the public except to keep the public informed of what programs and policies that Department is concerned 185
with. This is in marked contrast to the secretaries of the outer cabinet. Whereas the inner cabinet members will have their Departments keep the public informed, the outer cabinet perceives their Department's role as that of a servant to the public.
Appropriately, the largest difference between the inner and outer cabinet secretaries is in their goals regarding client groups. 36$ of the secretaries of the outer cabinet expressed specific group goals for their department, ranging from seeking the views of business and industry to meeting with labor, business, and the public as a means of minimizing labor disputes in the future. No member of the inner cabinet expressed a view that would have had their Department looking out for or serving the particular needs of any group in society (see Table 25).
Again, this would help explain the lack of concern for managing intragovernmental conflict on the part of the outer cabinet secretaries.
These secretaries would find this activity inconsistent with the perceived need of their department to serve as advocates for their constituents' interests, and would therefore avoid this activity.
In looking at Table 25, the work of Herbert A. Simon, Donald W.
Sraithburg, and Victor A. Thompson is also useful in understanding differences between the inner and outer cabinets. Simon et al describe organizational equilibrium as a function of individuals and groups outside the organization who contribute to the organization's support, including "the legislature, the chief executive, other governmental organizations, groups regulated or served by the organization 186
48 ('clientele' groups), and the general public." These authors explain how some organizations are dependent upon the support of clientele groups for garnering Congressional support.
For some administrative organizations there are groups within society whose support, working through their representatives in the legislature, can guarantee the survival of the organization against almost any odds and whose opposition, in like fashion, is tantamount to the death of the organization or at lgast considerable modification of its objective and methods. 9
As Simon et al argue, all departments and agencies are dependent upon enabling statutes and congressional appropriations, including
cabinet departments. Only the inner cabinet departments have a realistic hope of ongoing congressional attention. Therefore, outer cabinet secretaries are forced to turn to clientele groups for support who in turn will lobby appropriate congressional committees on their behalf. "They can survive only so long as they can continue to secure the support of politically effective groups in the community and continue through these groups to secure legislative and executive support.
MIDTERM VERSUS INITIAL APPOINTMENTS—
THE "NAIVE" CABINET EFFECTS
In comparing the department goals that have been identified by midterm appointees with those identifed by initial apointees, there is 187
one observation that can be made in terms of the "naive" view of the cabinet characterization. Midterm replacements are less interested in adhering to the President's platform than are the first appointments of a new administration (see Table 26). This is the largest difference in goals, and even it is only a 15$ difference.
Table 26: Goals— Midterm Appointment vs. Initial Appointment
Goals Midterm Initial*
Work on President's
Priorities/Platform 17.5$ 32.0$
Policy-making 27.5 39.0
Manage Intragovernmental
Conflict 12.5 21.0
Efficiency in Department 15.0 24.0
Serve Public 12.5 21.0
Inform Public 12.5 3.5
Work with and seek Congressional
Advice 27.5 18.0
Serve Group Interests (e.g., labor,
business) 20.0 18.0
N = 40 28
(•includes Hobby, Weaver, and Boyd) 188
Recalling that a large percentage of midterm appointees have served in the federal sector, with 66$ moving from one position in the national government to another, it would make sense for them to know what the
Department needs are and the direction desired for the Department.
These individuals would not be as dependent upon the President to determine Department priorities. Some may have expected the reverse to be the case with "loyalists" being placed in these positions. But there are two arguments to consider. First, with the President's program already in place, or modified as the course of the administration progresses, it would make little sense to adhere to a rigid program identified as the administration's platform. In addition, although it is not a focus of this dissertation, it would appear that sometimes if the President selects a "loyalist" for the number one position in the
Department, then subcabinet members will be part of the
Washington-experience based community, or a specialist in a substantive policy area of the department. By the same token, an experienced member from the Washington community in the number one position may signal a presidential loyalist in the number two spot in the department 51 hierarchy. 189
Federal Sector Experience
In rejecting the concept of balance as influencing the secretary’s perspective as stated in Chapters 2 and 3» I would have suspected a greater difference in terms of serving particular group needs, with far more midterm appointments than initial appointments expressing that goal. The reason for this would be that these individuals, cognizant of the workings of subgovernments and the presence of- issue networks would be sensitive to constituent concerns. I decided to explore that further. I would suspect that those individuals who worked in the federal sector, especially members of the outer cabinet, would express a far greater concern for careful dealings with the public and constituent groups than would those without such service. This did not prove to be the case.
I began an exploration with a look at those having had prior service in the same Department which they were now heading (see Table
27). 190
Table 27: Goals— Prior Service in the Same Department
Goals Prior Dept Work No Prior Dept Work
Work on President's Priorities/
Platform 25.0* 22.0*
Policy-making 31.0 33.0
Manage Intragovernmental Conflict 19.0 14.0
Efficiency in Department 19.0 17.0
Serve Public 9.0 22.0
Inform Public 19.0 0
Work with and Seek Congressional
Advice 34.0 14.0
Serve Group InterestsCe.g., labor,
business) 12.5 33.0
N = 32 36
The greatest difference occurs in the areas of seeking out congressional advice and seeking input from various constituent groups. As stated in
Chapter 3> many of those with prior service in the Department served as
Assistant for Congressional liaison. It is therefore not surprising to find a larger percentage of this group anticipating cooperation with
Congress as a goal for the Department. But if one accepts the idea of subgovernments and issue networks, it is surprising to find a greater percentage of those lacking experience in the Department expressing an interest in their Department serving constituent needs and receiving input from these groups than do those with prior service. However, 191
there is a problem in looking at those with prior Department service since the greater proportion consists of members of the inner cabinet.
As Table 25 indicates, none of the inner cabinet members anticipate a role in constituent service. The next section will address this problem
further.
Past Employment: Governmental Versus
Non-Governmental Experience
Before turning to a look at the inner cabinet/outer cabinet framework and past employment experience, I want to first examine the effect of past governmental experience broadly speaking. It appears as if those coming directly from the federal sector (see Table 28) have a more disparate view of the goals for their respective Departments, suggesting a department-specific orientation. 192
Table 28: Goals— Last Employment
Goals Business/Law Govt.-National
Work on President's Priorities/
Platform 28.5% 22.5%
Policy-making 43.0 26.0
Manage Intragovernmental Conflict 33.0 10.0
Efficiency in Department 24.0 13.0
Serve Public 19.0 13.0
Inform Public 5.0 16.0
Work with and Seek Congressional
Advice 19.0 26.0
Serve Group Interests (e.g., Labor,
Business) 9.5 19.0
N = 21 31
That is, they are clear about the direction in which their Department is heading, and what the Department's tasks are. In contrast, those coming from the private sector again have a naive view of the cabinet and are less specific in the direction of their Department. In addition, a far greater proportion are interested in "cabinet government," with cooperation with other Departments and the minimizing of intragovernmental feuding being Department objectives.
In looking at the policy objectives of the secretaries based on past employment, it is not surprising, with this naive view, that more 193
governmental outsiders perceive policy-making as a role. And, in
looking at overall patterns of employment (see Table 29), those with mixed governmental experience view policy-making as far less of a
Department objective than those strictly from the private sector.
Table 29: Goals— Predominant Employment
Mixed: Govt Law
and Business/ or Govt-National or Law Business Work on President’s Priorities/
Platform 25.0* 31-0% 18.0$
Policy-making 12.5 25.0 53.0
Manage Intragovernmental Conflict 0 12.5 29.0
Efficiency in Department 12.5 9.0 23.5
Serve Public 25.0 16.0 18.0
Inform Public 12.5 3.0 23.5
Work with and Seek Congressional
Advice 12.5 34.0 18.0
Serve Group Interests (e.g., labor,
business) 0 22.0 23.5
N = 8 32 17
It is interesting, however, to see the difference between those with a mixed governmental-private sector background and those who have mostly worked in the federal sector. Twice as many of those with a mixed 194
background do see policy-making as a Department objective as do those
with experience only in the federal sector. This would lend some
support to Heclo's identification of issue networks, and a free-flowing
exchange of people "having to do with some aspect (or, as defined by the
network, some problem) of public policy."^2 As Heclo writes, "Rather
than groups united in dominance over a program, no one, as far as one
can tell, is in control of the policies and issues. Any direct material
interest is often secondary to intellectual or emotional commitment.
Network members reinforce each other's sense of issues as their
interests, rather than (as standard political or economic models would
have it) interests defining positions on issues.If issue networks do
exist, then the expectation is that a greater proportion of individuals
serving in various sectors would be moving from one to another due to
their commitment to a particular aspect of public policy. The data does
seem to indicate this may be the case. However, the limits of this
study prevent any attempt to demonstrate this further.
What is interesting to note is that there is little difference
between those with private sector experience and those who have moved
back and forth between the federal and private sectors in Department
concern for group interests (see Table 29).
However, in looking at Table 28, 19% of those who were just serving
in the federal sector do see group interests as a Department concern. I would have expected a far greater percentage of those with mixed experience to understand the importance of receiving input and sharing 195
information across the sectors of society. However, the inner-outer
cabinet framework may again be causing a distortion due to the
concentration of those with federal sector experience in the inner
cabinet.
Prior Employment;
Inner Versus Outer Cabinet
In controlling for inner versus outer cabinet posts, the number of
cases becomes small, but the results do show that it is those members of the outer cabinet from the private sector that are more interested in group interests (see Table 30). 196
Table 30: Goals— Predominant Adult Employment Controlling for Inner/Outer Cabinet
INNER CABINET
Mixed: Govt Law and Business/ or Goals Govt-National Law Business
Work on President’s Priorities/
Platform 25* 38* 11*
Policy-making 25 31 67
Manage Intragovernmental Conflict 0 23 33
Efficiency in Department 0 8 33
Serve Public 0 8 11
Inform Public 0 8 33
Work with and Seek Congressional
Advice 25 5k 11
Serve Group Interests (e.g., labor,
business) 0 0 0
N = M 13 9 197
Table 30— continued
OUTER CABINET
Mixed: Govt Law and Business/ or Goals Govt-National Law Business
Work on President’s Priorities/
Platform 25$ 26$ 25$
Policy-making 0 21 37.5
Manage Intragovernmental Conflict 0 5 25
Efficiency in Department 25 10.5 12.5
Serve Public 50 21 25
Inform Public 25 0 12.5
Work with and Seek Congressional
Advice 0 21 25 '
Serve Group Interests (e.g., labor,
business) 0 26 75
N = 4 19 8 198
CONCLUSIONS
In examining goals, it appears as if they fit in nicely with role orientation. The goal of President Kennedy's secretaries mentioned most frequently, that of following the priorities set by the President, reflects their primary role orientation of serving the President. Much has been written concerning Eisenhower's delegation of responsibility to his secretaries, and they appear to be attuned to that approach with 55% indicating specific policy goals in contrast to 28.5% of Truman's, 15/6 of Kennedy's, and 21/6 of Johnson’s appointments expressing a similar
Department orientation.
The Inner Cabinet vs. the Outer Cabinet
The most vivid distinction between members of the inner-cabinet and the outer cabinet appears in the way respective secretaries envision their Department's dealings with the public. The inner cabinet members see little, if any, role for their Department vis a vis the public, except in disseminating information. In contrast, over a third of the outer cabinet members view their Departments as dealing with specific constituent groups, soliciting input from labor, business, or consumers as to their Department's actions. Although Cronin's categorization 199
appears useful, the definition of the outer cabinet as those cabinet
members who "assume a relatively straightforward advocacy 511 orientation," needs to be interpreted rather broadly in order to
include those secretaries serving distinct clientele groups
(agriculture, labor, commerce), as well as those outer cabinet
secretaries who have several constituent groups to serve.
Initial Versus Midterm Appointments
There are differences in goal orientation between initial and midterm replacements, with midterm replacements having more clearly
defined objectives for the Department and less of a dependency on the
President for direction of the Department. Once again the recruitment of midterm replacements from the federal sector would create a pool of
individuals having a definite concept of the Department’s needs. This
is further supported when past employment is examined. Those
individuals serving in the federal sector upon their selection as
secretary appear to be more specific in the direction of their
Department and less inclined than those from the federal sector to let
the President's priorities shape Department activities. Summary
To sum up, the inner and outer cabinet distinction, and the concept of the "naive" view of the cabinet where secretaries without past
federal governmental experiences tend to hold an over-idealistic view of the cabinet, are useful in understanding cabinet secretaries; despite differences by administration, these frameworks allow broader statements to be made about the cabinet secretaries. As has been noted throughout the past three chapters, the limited number of cases in each department
limits conclusions as to whether specific departments can be grouped together in various configurations that have not yet been identified by cabinet observers. In addition, if the cabinet has undergone changes in the time period of 19^5 to 1969, it is difficult to firmly detect the origins of these changes given the limited number of administrations
(and therefore, cases) in this study. These are subjects that will be addressed more fully in the final chapter of this dissertation. 201
Chapter 4: Footnotes
U. S. Congress, Senate, Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Stewart L. Udall, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 13, 1961, p. 22.
2 U. S. Congress, Senate, Judiciary Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Robert Kennedy, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 13, 1961, pp. 38-39. '
3Ibid.
11 James Forrestal, Memo to Dwight Eisenhower, James Forrestal (4) Folder Feb. 1948-Oet. 1948, DDE Box #43, February 21, 1948, Eisenhower Library.
5 Ezra Taft Benson, Cross Fire: The Eight Years with Eisenhower (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1962), p. 88. While In office, Benson kept a daily journal and his autobiography is the result of the journal.
^Henry Fowler, Memorandum to all Presidential Appointees in Treasury Department, FG 110 Department of the Treasury, 12-4-65 to 1-26-66 Folder, Draft Memorandum for the President attached to January 13, 1966 Memo, p. 1, Johnson Library.
7Ibid., p. 3.
Q U. S., Congress, Senate, Finance Committee, Confirmation Hearing for C. Douglas Dillon, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 11th and 13th, 1961, p. 12. ■"
9Ibid., p. 14.
10 U. S., Congress, Senate, Armed Services Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Robert McNamara, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 17, 1961, p. 23. 202
U. S., Congress, Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Dean Rusk, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 21, TgST, p. 10. '
12 Nicholas Katzenbach, Cabinet Report for the President, May 17, 1966, Subject: Program to Promote Creative Thinking, Social Progress, and Efficiency in the Department of Justice, Confidential File, Johnson Library.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Luther Hodges, Oral History Interview, Dan B. Jacobs, Kennedy Library, May 19, 21, 1961; May 18, 1964, p. 40 (re.vised numbering).
1^U. S., Congress, Senate, Commerce Committe, Confirmation Hearing for Alan S. Boyd, 90th Cong., 1st sess., January 11, 1967, p. 3 ^
17 U. S., Congress, Senate, Armed Services Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Robert McNamara, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 17, 1961, p. 27.
18 Administrative History, Defense Department, Vol. 8, Public Affairs Box #3; Folder: Documentary Supplement, #36-#44, Memorandum for the Secretaries of the Military Departments; the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Director of Defense Research and Engineering; and others, January 8, 1968, from Phil G. Goulding, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), Johnson Library.
1Q Hubert M. Blalock, Jr. Social Statistics, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972), Chapter 15; Norman H. Nie, C. Hadlai Hull, Jean G. Jenkins, Karin Steibrenner, Dale H. Bent, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1975), pp. 222-228. '
20 Hubert M. Blalock, Social Statistics, 2nd ed., pp. 277-278; Norman H. Nie et al, Statistical Package for~ the Social Sciences, p. 203
224.
21 All of these statistical measures assume that any individual will only be placed in one cell of the crosstab. However, I have recorded several roles and goals per secretary, which decreases the apparent extent of relationship in Table 22.
22 Arthur Flemming to Eisenhower, Memo, Administration, Ann Whitman Files, Arthur Flemming Folder 3, 1959-61, January 5, 1959, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.
23 For example, see Oral History Interview with Herbert Brownell by Thomas Soapes, February 24, 1977, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, pp. 36-39; Oral History Interview with Dwight D. Eisenhower, Dulles Oral History Collection, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, especially pp. 13-15.
24 see Harry S. Truman, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1961-1966), "Message to the Congress on the State of the Union and on the Budget," January 21, 1946; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1958-1961), "Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union," February 21, 1953; John F. Kennedy, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1961-1963), "Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union," January 30, 1961; Lyndon B. Johnson, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1965), "Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union," January 8, 1964.
25 Johnson, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, "Memorandum for the Heads of Departments and Agencies," November 30, 1963.
2 6 Ibid., "Remarks to the Press Following a Cabinet Meeting on Management of the Executive Branch," May 2, 1964.
27 As Ramsey Clark recounts in an oral history interview, although he viewed the position of Attorney General as far more of a legal than policy-making role, he did state that "you can't help but inject yourself into policy matters where I was quite strongly 204
opposed." While serving as Assistant Attorney General in the Lands Division under Robert Kennedy, Clark illustrated how the Justice Department got involved in more than legal questions and into the policy side of issues: "we could see conflicts in policy between the power commission and the Department of Interior and other federal agencies. This gave us both an opportunity, and, I think, a responsibility to go beyond the mere legal technician’s work and try to do a little architecture, which we did." Ramsey Clark, Oral History Interview, Johnson Library.
pO Thomas E. Cronin, The State of the Presidency (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975), p. 191.
29 George W. Johnson, ed., The Johnson Presidential Press Conferences (New York: Earl M. Colemen Enterprises, Inc., 1978), p. 357: July 28, 1965.
3°Macy to Johnson, Memo, Macy Files, Cohen Folder 2 of 2, April 27, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.
31 Confirmation Hearing for Alan S. Boyd.
32 Department of Transportation, Administrative History, Vol. 1, Part 2, Chapter 3 "Administration," p. 1, Johnson Library.
33 Confirmation Hearing for Alan S. Boyd, p. 5.
3I1 Department of Transportation, Administrative History, p. 1.
35J. Edward Day, My Appointed Round: 929 Days as Postmaster General (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965); U. S. Congress, Post Office and Civil Service Committee, Confirmation Hearing for J. Edward Day, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 16, 1961.
^Eugene J. Lyons, Oral History Interview by Thomas F. Soapes, March 19, 1976, Eisenhower Library, p. 47.
37Ibid., p. 53. 205
38Ibid.
39Ibid., p. 55.
40 This is true even to this day, although the appointment of Raymond Donovan, representative of management's interests, to head Labor in President Reagan's first term, has been a unique move.
41 Oscar L. Chapman, Oral History Interview, June, 1980, Truman Library, p. 457.
4? Ibid., p. 425.
43 "Interior Secretary," New York Times, December 8, 1960, p. 34.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Charles Mohr, "Interior," New York Times, December 23, 1980, p. 8.
48 Herbert A. Simon, Donald W. Smithburg, and Victor A. Thompson, Public Administration (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950), p. 383.
49Ibid., p. 384.
50Ibid., p. 401.
51 For example, Nicholas de Belleville Katzenbach as Deputy Attorney General under Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the Kennedy Administration. ("Daily Dilemma of the Attorney General," Don Oberdorfer, New York Times, March 7, 1965, sec. 6, p. 28).; Chester Bowles as Under Secretaryof State to Secretary of State Dean Rusk in the Kennedy Administration (Transcript of News Conference, New York 206
Times, December 13» 1960, p. 19); or careerist Jesse Donaldson, 1st Assistant Postmaster General under Postmaster General Robert Hannegan in the Truman Administration.
52 Hugh Heclo, "Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment," in Anthony King, ed., The New American Political System (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise "institute, 1976), p. 103.
53 Heclo, "Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment," p. 102.
54 Thomas E. Cronin, The State of the Presidency, p. 191. CHAPTER 5: THE CABINET— A CONCLUDING LOOK
A good understanding and perspective on the function of the cabinet and its place in the Executive Branch of government comes from the U.S. Senate. Often during confirmation hearings questions may arise as to the appropriate age or relevant experience of a prospective secretary (For a good example of the questions raised and of thoughts concerning the fitness or unfitness of a candidate, see Robert Kennedy's 1 hearing for the post of Attorney General ). Yet as long as a nominee is of good character and intelligence, and with no conflict of interest, that individual will be confirmed to serve as a member of the
President's cabinet. In the time frame of this study only one individual nominated for a Cabinet position failed to win Senate 2 confirmation. Thus the collective wisdom of the Senate, expressed throughout the hearings, is that the cabinet is to serve as the
President's advisers and the selection is up to the President, not the
Senate, and for whatever reasons the President wishes.
Observers of the Presidency are often quick to evaluate the cabinet, in its initial configuration, as a collectivity without consideration of the President's or secretary's perspective. One finding that emerges from this study is that although there are
207 208
identifiable patterns from an outsider's point of view (not necessarily all of the traditionally identified ones), there remain distinctly different patterns that can only be understood if the view is taken from the secretary's perspective— that is, an insider looking out. There are differences from administration to administration that can only be identified if one takes the cabinet member's perspective and looks at role perception. The idea of "balance" has little relevance to individual secretaries, who rarely view themselves as serving or representing a particular group or region in society. And, if members of the cabinet ever do envision their respective Departments as having as an objective the cultivating of constituent needs, it is the midterm appointments and not the initial, "first" cabinet members that perceive this role. Understanding of the cabinet has been hindered by attempts to analyze individual members in terms of superficial and unimportant attributes (i.e., geographical balance, interest group affiliation), and by ascribing an often non-existent collectivity of purpose to the cabinet as a whole, thereby obscuring patterns of cabinet performance which could help explain what this enigmatic body is all about. 209
THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION--
A SHIFT IN CABINET ORIENTATION?
In looking at these four administrations it does appear as if there is a shift in the role of the cabinet that would parallel the institutionalization of the executive branch as the dominant force in the lives of Americans. The cabinet of the 1940's was composed of
"political generalists." Cabinet meetings were used to "float ideas."
For example, "would this plan sell in Peoria?" or "would the people back home in Georgia find this option acceptable?" Cabinet meetings were most effective for this purpose because of the political
■3 backgrounds of the members.
By way of example, Dean Acheson's notes concerning a September 21,
1945 cabinet meeting illustrate the use of a cabinet meeting as a means of gaining feedback in an open discussion on the question of sharing information on the atomic bomb with the Russians. Acheson records the comments of all participating in the discussion. Clinton Anderson,
Secretary of Agriculture, is recorded by Acheson as stating the importance to the President of retaining the "confidence of the Country on his ability to handle and deal with the Russians." Anderson "felt that giving our atomic energy and bomb knowledge to the Russians would weaken that confidence....In his recent speaking tours both in New 210
Mexico and Illinois he found universal disapproval of any idea that we
should share our advantage with the Russians. Russia sold Alaska not
because of good will to us but because of the frustration of their li efforts to get control of the West Coast." After all present had given
their opinions, Truman then requested a memorandum in writing of each
one’s views, with a meeting to follow in a week at which time he would 5 make known his position.
Truman and Johnson both inherited cabinets and equally selected
cabinet members from the federal sector. However, if one compares the
Truman secretaries with the Johnson secretaries, there is a difference
in perspective— far more of Truman’s appointees do perceive their role
in vague, non-specific terms than is true for the Johnson administration. With the creation of several new Departments, beginning with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1953, the development of a new executive branch structure appears to have ushered
in a new cabinet perspective. The secretaries of the Eisenhower and
Johnson cabinets appear to have had a clear idea as to what their position was and the objectives for their Department, with little need to rely solely upon the President for constant direction. Johnson's cabinet members emphasized the Department management tasks at hand, and
Eisenhower's cabinet emphasized policy-making, especially as related to their respective Department’s needs. This is not the case with the
Kennedy cabinet, where most intended to proceed cautiously and look to the President for advice. 211
Although the Kennedy cabinet appears to be an anomaly, there still is evidence of this historical shift in the cabinet’s role. The most loyal of Kennedy’s appointees, his brother Robert, at the time of his confirmation hearings, emphasized the administrative aspects of his role as head of the Justice Department. And if Kennedy had served a complete term or even a second term, the overall perspective of the cabinet might have been different, especially as the composition of the cabinet changed. Only by looking at subsequent administrations and the cabinets of the 1970’s and 1980's will it be possible to determine if a true shift in the perception of cabinet members as to their role in the executive branch has taken place in the past 32 years.
What can be demonstrated is the appropriateness of several theoretical frameworks, some of which have become quite prevalent in the literature, in understanding the cabinet.
INNER CABINET VS. THE OUTER CABINET
There is strong evidence to support the inner/outer cabinet framework first identified by Cronin. First, in looking at recruitment patterns for the secretaries there are differences in terms of their backgrounds. Over half of all the secretaries in inner cabinet
Departments are recruited directly from the federal sector. This is not the case with the outer cabinet. In addition, nearly one half of all 212
inner cabinet secretaries had served in the Department which they were
now heading, usually as assistant or under secretary. Only a fifth of
the outer cabinet secretaries had gained similar experience. And the
outer cabinet secretaries, unlike the secretaries of the inner cabinet,
gained substantial governmental experience at the state and local levels
rather than at the national level.
In looking at the role perceptions of members of the inner cabinet and outer cabinet there is no difference in the area of "serving the
President," suggesting a "naive" view of the cabinet whereby all
secretaries envision the same role, i.e., as a collegial set of advisors
to the President on a broad cross-section of issues. This view in and of itself is commendable and constructive enough, but it does lay the groundwork for eventual frustration on the part of those secretaries who will not be used or viewed in that manner by the President.
But there do appear to be differences in terms of the envisioned role of the secretary and Department vis a vis Congress with a far greater percentage of inner cabinet than outer cabinet secretaries
perceiving congressional interaction as a role. Again this could
reflect the recruitment of individuals to the inner cabinet who have
served as assistant secretary (oftentimes for congressional relations)
in the Department on a previous occasion, and the selection of outer
cabinet members who might perceive this as a routine (and therefore unstated) role. 213
The inner cabinet also perceives little, if any, dealings with the
public, or specialized groups, as a part of their job or the job of
their Department. This is in contrast to those secretaries of the outer
cabinet where perceive serving clientele interests as a definite
role and 36? have clear Department objectives that include meeting with
and soliciting input from labor leaders, farmers, consumers and so on.
INITIAL APPOINTMENTS VS. MIDTERM APPOINTMENTS
There also appear to be several differences between the first
cabinet a President selects and replacements to that cabinet as members
leave during the course of an administration. The findings of Stanley
et al, that a President tends to select more individuals from the
federal sector to executive Department posts as an administration wears
on, remains true when cabinet members apart from the Executive Branch
are examined. There are also other differences between midterm and
initial appointments. Beginning with the midterm replacements of
Eisenhower, there is a more pronounced "naive" view among the initial appointments than is true for subsequent replacements. Again, the
Truman cabinet appears to have a stronger notion of "serving the
President" and of serving as collegial advisors throughout the administration. This would lend support to the view that a shift does
begin to take place with the Eisenhower cabinet when members begin to 214
have a more differentiated view of their task dependent upon the
President's and Department's needs. As the administration progresses in
time this becomes more marked since replacement secretaries, more
heavily recruited from the federal sector, tend to have a greater
understanding of their role and what they wish to accomplish in this
post than do the first appointments of a President.
An interesting discovery is that it is the midterm appointments and
not those appointed at the start of an administration that are more
concerned with the representation and serving of constituent interests.
In looking at role perception, 31 -5% of midterm appointments, but only
'\‘\% of initial appointments identify serving clientele needs as a role.
But in looking at this further, it is not the time of appointment as
much as the nature of past work experience that appears to affect how a
secretary will set forth the Department's objectives. While those
coming directly from the federal sector do have a more disparate view of
the goals for their respective Departments, and hence a
Department-specific orientation, it is those individuals with a mixed
employment record including service in the national government (although not predominantly a federal employee throughout adulthood) that have the
greatest desire to see that clientele needs are served.
In looking at this finding, it appears as if it would support the
concept of issue networks identified by Heclo. It is those individuals who are moving across estates that will have the greatest interest in
policy, and understand the need for sharing information across sectors 215
and with Congress.
Although members of the inner cabinet also have a mixed
background, they have a dissimilar view of the need to service groups,
reflecting a major difference betwen inner cabinet and outer cabinet
secretaries.
THE PARTISAN FACTOR
Partisan differences do not appear to be as important a factor in
explaining cabinet recruitment or secretary role perception as do the
frameworks of the inner and outer cabinet, midterm versus initial appointments, and issue networks. Although I have but one Republican administration in this study, my findings are supported by a study that attempts to examine governing coalitions. Kenneth Prewitt and William
McAllister examine a problem of democratic theory which "assumes a necessary link between elections and electoral activity, on the one hand, and elite recruitment and governing, on the other.The focus of their study is on the executive elite— cabinet and subcabinet members, along with the heads of regulatory agencies and independent commissions— in a four decade period of time, extending from the Hoover through Nixon Administrations. 216
Prewitt and McAllister "attempt to bring (this) theorized relationship into empirical focus by concentrating on whether the presidential governing coalition systematically varies with the
President's electoral coalition, the latter being indexed by which party 7 controls the White House." These authors note a
declining proportion of lawyers which occurs in the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Beginning in the early 1960' s , elites with doctorates gain at the expense of those trained in law....The skill of law, which has generally been seen as integrally linked to governing, is being replaced by a different sort of expertise which might well be the hallmark of a new ruling group. This transformation apparently is immune to variations in party control of the White House.
Prewitt and McAllister do note some short-term fluctuations by political party in power in terms of such social attributes as religious composition or type of college or university attended. Also, there does appear to be a partisan difference dependent on "whether a given administration is of a party which has been in control of the executive branch for a long or short period of time."^ For the in-party (already in power), Republican Presidents in their study have drawn more from the business sector than from appointed government than is the case for the
Democratic administrations (although in both instances more individuals from appointed government than business were selected for these 10 executive posts. They conclude that an overall trend towards the selection of individuals with more specialized and technical skills for these positions is stronger than partisan differences.11 Again this reinforces Heclo's concept of issue networks and the movement of skilled individuals across various estates— party affiliation is not as important as policy interest or expertise. (It is important to note 217
that both Heclo and Prewitt and McAllister are examining more broadly the governing elite, whereas my study is limited to cabinet secretaries, although the findings do lend support to one another).
The inability to explain differences in recruitment of cabinet secretaries and/or their role perception, arising because of change in party control of the White House, is not surprising given the drop in party identification, increase in ticket-splitting, and rise in issue 12 voting. (There is one caveat in that for the most part the Democratic
Presidents did appoint Democrats, and Eisenhower did appoint
Republicans to their respective cabinets.)
As I have stated earlier in this chapter, the Eisenhower
Administration appears to mark a break with the past, and the ushering in of a new type of cabinet— where administration of respective departments is an important consideration by both the President and
Secretary. Prewitt and McAllister would date this shift as beginning in the 1960's , although there are important shifts underway in the 1950's
(such as the consolidation of several agencies into the Department of
Health, Education and Welfare). They describe the emergence of a new generation in power,
which matured politically during and after rather than before the New Deal....The executive elite drawn from this new generation accepts that government will play a managerial, perhaps even a planning role in the economy. Moreover, they run a government which must necessarily become intimately involved in the economic and social welfare of society. The economic collapse of the thirties and the co-ordination needs of World War II caused the development of new governmental structures and responsibilities. 3 218
It would appear as if a partisan explanation is not as appropriate in understanding cabinet members and others of the executive elite as are the other frameworks of this study. And there does appear to be a shift in cabinet orientation beginning with the Eisenhower
Administration to more administrative functions that overshadows any partisan differences.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The question remains, is there another way of looking at the cabinet outside of the frameworks this study has examined? In looking at the backgrounds of the secretaries there is a similarity in Defense and Commerce Secretaries coming from the business world, with an absence of post-baccalaureate degrees. And in looking at role perception, again the Commerce Secretaries and Postmasters General appear to be apart from the rest of the outer cabinet in having specific interests and a definite view of the position, with few indicating a vague "serve the
President" role. In addition, unlike the rest of the outer cabinet, these two groups are the most interested in working with Congress.
In an attempt to see if the Commerce Secretaries and Postmasters
General are more similar to the inner cabinet or to the remaining members of the outer cabinet, I looked at the role perceptions of the 219
members of the inner cabinet. There does appear to be a split— the
Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury are far more inclined to have a broad conception of the role, with a high percentage viewing their position as one of serving the President or working with Congress, and the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General join the Secretary of Commerce and the Postmaster General in having a more narrowly defined view— e.g., administrative management of the Department, policy, enforce laws, and so on.
But given the changed nature of the cabinet, with the post of
Postmaster General removed from the ranks of the cabinet in 1971, that aspect of the cabinet is moot. Yet the Secretaries of Commerce may be better off in a different framework than that of the inner cabinet vs. the outer cabinet, especially if more and more of those serving in that post do have a mixed employment history. With so few cases to examine, no true conclusions can be drawn, but it does suggest an area ripe for research. However, as stated in Chapter M, the secretaries of the
Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor are more inclined to envision their department serving clientele needs than are the other cabinet secretaries, perhaps because of the diverse clientele a department such as Health, Education and Welfare or Housing and Urban
Development would be serving. Again, the limited number of cases does limit conclusions that can be drawn, encouraging research of a more expanded nature to address this question. 220
A worthwhile area to consider in looking at roles and goals is that of the past ties and relationship an individual had with the President, prior to appointment. Although I intended it as part of this study, I discovered that except in the most widely written of cases, available information was not reliable, and an outsider would have an extremely difficult time in tracking down who the President knew, to what extent, 14 and at what point in time.
This research has looked at only the initial perceptions of the cabinet member, with attempts made to assess existing ideas or ways of thinking about cabinet secretaries. How these perceptions adapt over time to changes in the environment is left for future research. I would suggest, given the more clearly delineated approach adopted by secretaries after Truman, that there would not be as great a shift throughout their tenure, especially in the case of midterm replacements.
The constant tenure of secretaries throughout administrations and
Departments would reinforce this view. That is not to rule out the idea of disenchantment, but to suggest that if role perceptions are constant then departures could be more the function of a need to return to one’s business interests than in job dissatisfaction.
Monitoring stated roles and goal orientation throughout a term of office would provide an important base for an appropriate next step— determining actual role activity on the part of the secretary and actual priorities worked on by the department. The link could then be made with other actors in the Executive Office of the President and 221
Cabinet, as well as the President— identifying how relationships are
initially perceived by all relevant actors, and how, in fact, they
manifest themselves. The role of the cabinet in the presidential
decision-making process has become muddied by the growth of the White
House staff and other institutionalized advisers in the Executive Office
of the President. By isolating the role of cabinet secretaries and
then moving analysis to relationships with other actors in the Executive
branch, this process could be clarified.
In this dissertation I have attempted to facilitate future research on the cabinet by examining and sorting through the various ways of looking at cabinet secretaries as a first step for future analysis. By using documentary evidence I have hoped to suggest that such research, especially when interviews are not possible, can be of value. It would be ideal to look at documentary evidence, as well as
interviewing secretaries at the start of a term of office and at several points of time throughout a term of office to determine consistency of expressed opinions. I would hope that my future research could expand to include such interviews.
Moving the study of cabinet secretaries to a level comparable with other areas of study by first identifying categorization schemes needed as a basis for further analysis has been one of my research objectives.
In addition, isolating the perspective of the secretary from that of the press, President, and political scientists is an important difference of this study from other studies that have been done on the cabinet. As a 222
result, this study has not looked at the cabinet as a collectivity. My
study has looked at individual cabinet secretaries. The role
perceptions and departmental goal orientations I have identified have
been those of the secretary as head of a department. I have not looked
at the secretary’s perspective as a member of a group and have not
analyzed the cabinet from a group perspective. Research in that area
could be facilitated by looking at participation at cabinet meetings— who attends, what is discussed, what is the perception of
these meetings— and there is a good deal of documentary evidence available on cabinet agendas, notes recorded by participants, as well as
attendance information, although transcripts of such meetings may not be
available. I would suspect that the frameworks examined in this study would also be of use in such research.
The cabinet has undergone several changes in the past fifteen years— the loss of the Post Office Department, the addition of the
Departments of Energy arid Education, and the transformation of the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare into the Department of
Health and Human Services— that suggest continued response to clientele concerns, as well as the need for better administrative control over
Departments. Finally, four administrations have followed the Johnson presidency and have not been included in this analysis. It would be worthwhile to extend this analysis through the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and
Reagan cabinets; perhaps this study of theoretical frameworks will be of use to researchers attempting to understand this enigmatic institution. 223
FOOTNOTES
^U.S. Congress, Senate, Judiciary Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Robert F. Kennedy, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 13, 1961.
2 see the case of Lewis Strauss, nominated by Eisenhower for the post of Secretary of Commerce, and sworn in but rejected by the Senate 7 months later in a 49 to 46 vote, the first nominee to be rejected since 1925 (see the New York Times, November 14, 1958, p. 3, June 19, 1959, p. 1; U.S. Congress, Senate, Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Lewis L. Strauss, 86th Cong., 1st sess., March 17-May 14, 1959).
^John Kessel has shared these comments and observations Professor Arthur Macmahon made to his students.
li Dean Acheson, Memoranda of Cabinet Meetings, September 21, 1945, Truman Library.
5Ibid.
^Kenneth Prewitt and William McAllister, Chapter 5 "Changes in the American Executive Elite, 1930-1970," in Heinz Eulau and Moshe M. Czudnowski, eds. Elite Recruitment in Democratic Politics (New York: Sage Publications, Inc., 1976), p. 107.
7Ibid.
8Ibid., p. 108.
9Ibid., p. 126
10Ibid., p. 112.
11Ibid., pp. 127-128. 224
12Ibid., p. 127.
13Ibid., p. 128.
14 I realized the futility of research in this area unless it was the sole task at hand, in reading accounts of Jesse Donaldson’s apointment to the post of Postmaster General in 1947 by President Truman, and subsequent accounts of his place in the cabinet. Upon his appointment the New York Times stated that Donaldson had met the President while serving as a postal inspector in Kansas City when Truman was serving as a Missouri County Judge but had never gotten "to know each other intimately." (New York Times, November 26, 1947, p. 13, col. 1) Within a year, Donaldson is described as "an old personal friend of the President," (November 4, 1948, p. 15, col. 3-4). APPENDIX A: SENATE CONFIRMATION HEARINGS
Not until the Eisenhower Administration was any systematic attempt made to publish Senate confirmation hearings of cabinet members. A published account of Robert E. Hannegan's Senate confirmation for the post of Postmaster General suggests the procedures in place in the
1940's :
Threaded through the lengthy oral contest were protests from the minority side against a practice in Senate committees of reporting nominations favorably after informal polls are taken, rather than making voting decisions based on meetings and hearings. Some minority members of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, which considered the Hannegan nomination,, complained that they had not been polled, even informally.
At Acheson's confirmation for the post of Secretary of State,
Senator Vandenburg commented on the "unprecedented public hearings" ? being held.
If some questions were being raised as to a nominee then the possibility of a hearing was discussed and vote would be taken by 3 Committee to determine if a hearing would be held.J
Although hearings were held and published on a routine basis beginning with the Eisenhower Administration, that did not mean that all would be of an in-depth nature with a true questioning of a nominee as
225 226
to his or her perceptions on the post. Often the financial arrangements
of individuals with huge corporate stockholdings would dominate the
hearings. As a case in point both Charles E. Wilson and Robert S.
McNamara, respective Presidents of Ford Motor Company and General
Motors, nominated for the post of Secretary of Defense, found Committee
interest centering around their trust arrangements rather than on their li plans for the United States* defense forces. One of the stranger
exchanges in a confirmation hearing occurred at the hearing of Sinclair
Weeks, Eisenhower's selection as Secretary of Commerce, illustrating the
less than serious side of some hearings:
The Chairman. Mr. Weeks, a personal question— the women will not listen— do you use zippers on your trousers? One of our columnists suggested that you had an antipathy to zippers. Mr. Weeks. I don't make zippers, but I use them occasionally. The Chairman. That is very pertinent to our approval. Are there any other questions?
Yet in spite of these examples, there are many useful exchanges
that do provide an insight into the Secretary's intentions and views on
matters of interest to either the relevant Senate Committee or
Secretary, or to both. As a case in point, the U.S. Senate Committee on
Post Office and Civil Service had few questions for W. Marvin Watson,
nominated for the post of Postmaster General early in 1968, yet
suggested what areas Watson and the Committee could explore together.
Watson admitted having little knowledge of the Post Office Department,
but that made little difference to the committee which was pleased with
the just completed service of Larry O'Brien in that post and of Watson's
3 years of service as Special Assistant to Lyndon Johnson in the White 227
House. The hearing served an educational role with the Senators suggesting that Watson's personnel and business background in work both in private industry and the White House were most appropriate for the head of the Post Office, which was a service organization requiring a manager. Also, the Committee suggested a dual exploration, by both the
Committee and Watson, of the possibility of making the Post Office a non-profit organization.^
Perhaps interviews of each Secretary in this study would have been the best means of obtaining desired information. However, the interviews would have had to be conducted at the start of each administration in order to have gotten initial perceptions, rather than a retrospective view. By undertaking this analysis with the use of historical documents, students of the Presidency, and more specifically, of the Cabinet, can in the future have a base from which to question cabinet appointees from the time their appointment is first announced.
Some may fault this approach, including past members of these administrations. (See Charles Sawyer's autobiography for an exceptionally critical statement on Neustadt's failure to interview
Sawyer about the Steel Seizure case for his classic work Presidential
Power— the Politics of Leadership and to therefore have written a chapter of "pure fiction." To quote Sawyer: "Dr. Neustadt tells of the people with whom he consulted. Strangely enough he never consulted me. One might think that a careful playwright would talk to the party involved, even if he were the villain of the play. Perhaps I have done 228
Dr. Neustadt an injustice. His failure to contact me may not have been an oversight. He may have realized that such a call would impair, if not eliminate, one illustration of the theory upon which his book was written. It would be unfortunate indeed if 'presidential power' were to be destroyed by an effort to ascertain the facts."^) 229
Appendix A: Footnotes
^C. P. Trussell, "Senate Confirms Hannegan, 60 to 2," New York Times, May 8, 1945, p. 23, col. 3-4.
2 "Senate, by 83 to 6, Confirms Acheson," New York Times, January 19, 1949, p. 14, col. 1.
3"M»Qrath Steps Out; Senate Unit Sets M ’Granery Hearing," New York Times, April 8, 1952, p. 1, col. 6.
4 U.S. Congress, Senate, Armed Services Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Charles E. Wilson, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., January 15-16, 1953; U.S. Congress, Senate, Armed Services Committee, Confirmation Hearing for Robert S. McNamara, 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 17, 1961.
e U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Confirmation Hearing for Sinclair Weeks, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., January 19. 1953, p. 2.
^U.S. Congress, Senate, Post Office and Civil Service Committee, Confirmation Hearing for W. Marvin Watson, 90th Cong., 2nd sess., April 23, 1968.
^Charles Sawyer, Concerns of a Conservative Democrat (Carbondale and Edwardsville; Southern Illinois University Press, 1968), pp. 274-276. 230
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______. Senate. Armed Services Committee Confirmation Hearing for Robert B. Anderson (Secretary of the Navy). 83rd Cong., 1st sess. (1953)•
______. Senate. Finance Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Oveta Culp Hobby (Federal Security Admiistrator). 83rd Cong., 1st sess., January 19. (1953).
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Senate. Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Douglas McKay. 83rd Cong., 1st sess., January 15. (1953).
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Senate. Labor and Public Welfare Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Martin P. Durkin. 83rd Cong., 1st sess., January 16! (1953).
Senate. Post Office and Civil Service Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Arthur E. Summerfield. 83rd Cong., 1st sess., January 14. (1953).
Senate. Labor and Public Welfare Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Arthur J. Goldberg. 83rd Cong., 2nd sess., January 18. (1954).
Senate. Labor and Public Welfare Committee. Confirmation Hearing for James P. Mitchell. 83rd Cong., 2nd sess., January 16. (1954).
Senate. Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Frederick A. Seaton. 84th Cong., 2nd sess., June 5. (1956).
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Senate. Finance Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Robert B. Anderson. 85th Cong., 1st sess., June 28. (1957).
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Senate. Armed Services Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Robert S. McNamara. 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 17. (1961).
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Senate Judiciary Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Nicholas Katzenbaoh (Assistant Attorney General). 87thCong., 1st sess., February 9. (1961).
Senate. Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Stewart L. Udall. 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 13. (1961).
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Senate. Judiciary Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Robert F. Kennedy. 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 13* (1961).
_ r______• Senate. Post Office and Civil Service Committee. Confirmation Hearing for J. Edward Day. 87th Cong., 1st sess., January 16. (1961)'.
Senate. Commerce Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Alan S . Boyd (Civil Aeronautics Board). 87th Cong., 2nd sess., July 31, (1962). 2 6 2
______. Senate. Post Office and Civil Service Committee. Confirmation Hearing for John A. Gronouski. 88th Cong., 1st sess., September 23. (1963)•
______. Senate. Commerce Committee. Confirmation Hearing for John T. Connor. 89th Cong., 1st sess., January 12. (1965).
_____ . Senate. Commerce Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Alan S. Boyd (Under Secretary-Commerce). 89 th Cong., 1st sess., May 24. (1965).
______. Senate. Judiciary Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Ramsey Clark (Deputy Attorney). 89 th Cong., 1st sess., February 8. ^ 1965).
______. Senate. Judiciary Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Nicholas Katzenbach. 89 th Cong., 1st sess., February 8. (1965).
______. Senate. Post Office and Civil Service Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Lawrence Francis Obrien. 89 th Cong., 1st sess., September 1. (1965).
______. Senate. Banking and Currency Committee. Confirmation Hearings for Robert C. Weaver and Robert C. Wood (Weaver to be Secretary and Wood to be Under-Secretary). 89 th Cong., 2nd sess., January 17. (1966).
______. Senate. Foreign Relations Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Nicholas Katzenbach (Under Secretary-State). 89 th Cong., 2nd sess., September 27* (1966).
______. Senate. Commerce Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Alexander Buel Trowbridge. 90th Cong., 1st sess., June 7. (1967).
______. Senate. Commerce Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Alan S. Boyd. 90th Cong., 1st sess., January 11. (1967).
______. Senate. Judiciary Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Ramsey Clark. 90th Cong., 1st sess., March 2 U (1967)•
______. Senate. Armed Services Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Clark M. Clifford. 90th Cong., 2nd sess., January 25. (1968 ).
______. Senate. Commerce Committee. Confirmation Hearing for Cyrus T. Smith. 90th Cong., 2nd sess., February 25~. (1968).
______. Senate. Post Office and Civil Service Committee. Confirmation Hearing for W. Marvin Watson. 90th Cong., 2nd sess., April 23. (1968). 263
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